Chapter Seven

CRUNCH FOR LUNCH?

It took all my strength, but when my mom came home from work last night, I did not ask her for tickets. I knew that begging would send my dad exploding through the roof of all evil.

I think he appreciated me because guess what he put in my lunch this morning?

Potato chips!

I was still sad that I wasn’t going to the concert. And I was still worried about the missing ukulele. But on the way to school, a thought popped into my head. Maybe, just maybe, one of the other kids would get tickets and invite me. There were ten people in our Songwriting Club. That meant I had a one-in-ten chance of getting a ticket.

Phillip was waiting for me by the fence. His back was to me, so I couldn’t tell if he was happy or sad.

Please be happy. Please be happy. Please be happy.

I ran up, and he turned around. He looked like a sad puppy.

“No luck?” I guessed.

“Too expensive,” Phillip said.

Resa came running up.

“Is your mom letting you go?” I asked her.

“She said yes,” Resa said.

“What?” I started jumping up and down.

She rolled her eyes. “She said yes, I can go when I’m a teenager. What about you?”

I stopped jumping. “My dad said no.”

We heard a squeal. Scarlett was running toward us.

“I got tickets!” she said.

Victoria and Mara heard her and ran over, too.

Scarlett danced around, and I started dancing, too. She said “tickets,” not “ticket.” This was good news!

“My mom said the show was very expensive, but she knew how much I wanted to go.”

“How many tickets did you get?” I asked.

“Four,” she said. “One for me. One for my mom. One for my sister, Brandy. And one extra—because my dad said he doesn’t want to go. My mom said I can pick somebody from my class to go with me.”

I dropped to my knees. “Please take me, Scarlett! Please. Please. Please.”

“What about me?” Victoria asked.

“I’m the one who told everybody about the show,” Phillip said.

Resa coughed. “You have to give it to me, Scarlett. I’m dying, and this is my last wish.”

“Ha ha,” Scarlett said.

“If I get picked and win the uke,” I said, “I promise I’ll share it with everybody.”

“I don’t care about the uke,” Phillip said. “I just want to see them play.”

“Everybody wants the ticket,” Resa said. “This could get ugly.”

Scarlett looked at all of us and smiled. It wasn’t exactly a nice smile. It was more like the kind of smile a queen would give when she knows everybody wants to try on her crown. Then she said, “Giving away a ticket to one of you would be a very nice thing for me to do, so whoever really wants the ticket will probably want to do something very nice for me.”

Victoria reached into her backpack and pulled out a glitter pen. “Here, Scarlett. I know you like these.”

“Thank you, Victoria! I do like glitter pens.”

Mara pulled off her bracelet. “Here, Scarlett. I know you like bracelets.”

Scarlett put it on.

“Oh brother,” Phillip said. “I can’t win.”

I checked my backpack. Besides homework, all I had was a dirty tissue, an empty candy wrapper, and my lunch. No way I was giving my potato chips to Scarlett.

Phillip tapped me. “Let’s go see if anybody else from the Songwriting Club got tickets.”

“I’m coming,” Resa said.

The three of us ran over to where the fifth graders were lining up. Pablo, Natalie, and Saki all said no luck. We found Riley and asked him. His parents had said no way.

“This is horrible,” Phillip said. “We have to bribe Scarlett. But she probably won’t pick us anyway.”

He and Resa started looking through their backpacks to see what they could give Scarlett. I looked at my lunch again.

The bell rang for school to start. As we were walking in, I said, “Scarlett, I have something for you.”

And then I gave her my potato chips. My salty, crunchy, lovely potato chips.

“A crunch for your lunch,” I said.

Not even the rhyme cheered me up.