Addie Bell's Shortcut to Growing Up - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jessica Brody is the author of many books for teens and tweens, including The Karma Club, 52 Reasons to Hate My Father, and the Unremembered trilogy. She also writes books for the Descendants: School of Secrets series, based on the hit Disney Channel original movie, Descendants. Her next book for tweens, Better You Than Me, will hit shelves November 13, 2018. She splits her time between California and Colorado, living with her husband and three dogs. When she was twelve, she was convinced her life would be perfect if she were sixteen. Visit Jessica at JessicaBrody.com and on Instagram and Twitter at @JessicaBrody.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Power-Smoothie Blender Brain

You know how every street has at least one crazy person living on it? Well, on our street, it’s Mrs. Toodles.

Of course, that’s not her real name. Mrs. Toodles is a nickname. Her real name, according to the dusty piles of old catalogs stacked in her living room, is Theodora Philippa Beaumont-Montgomery. But who has time to say all that? I’m not sure where the nickname came from. It’s just what everyone on Sherwood Drive has always called her. But it’s very fitting. She looks and talks exactly how you would imagine someone named Mrs. Toodles to look and talk.

She’s got long silvery hair that she wears pinned up inside a hat so tiny, sometimes I wonder if she stole it off a doll. And there are always these little wispies flying out of it, as though even her hair is trying to escape her crazy mind. She has pale blue eyes framed by layers of wrinkly skin, and she wears all her jewelry at once. She says it’s because someone is bound to steal anything she doesn’t have on her.

My parents told me she has something called dementia--a disease that mixes up your mind so you can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. That’s how Mom explained it to me once. Now every time I overhear someone on the block talking about Mrs. Toodles’s “condition,” I can’t help but imagine all her thoughts getting jumbled around in a blender like the ingredients of one of Mom’s disgusting green power smoothies. (Mom is still trying to get me to drink those, by the way, but I don’t trust anything the color of pond scum.)

I feel sorry for Mrs. Toodles. She never had any children of her own, and her family is all dead. I don’t think she has a lot of friends either. I never see anyone come to visit her. As far as I can tell, I’m the only friend she’s got. I go to Mrs. Toodles’s house at least once a week because she tells the best stories of anyone around and she always serves me lemonade and cookies. The lemonade is from a package and the cookies are from a tube, but they’re still pretty yummy.

I’m supposed to go over there tonight because it’s Thursday and I always visit Mrs. Toodles on Thursdays, but I’m running late. I told her I’d be there at five o’clock. It’s now 6:02 and I’m knee-deep in a pile of sweaters, leggings, and dresses that are all completely unwearable. I’m searching for the perfect birthday outfit for school tomorrow and it’s not going well. It doesn’t help that I’m turning twelve in exactly five hours and fifty-eight minutes and I still have to shop in the kids’ department. Mom swears that any day now I’ll get my growth spurt, but my body apparently never got that email, because I’m still short and scrawny and embarrassingly flat.

To be honest, it’s kind of hard to get excited about a birthday when absolutely nothing has changed. I mean, sure, it’s great to be another year older (I thought I’d be eleven for the rest of my life!), but where’s the evidence? Where’s the proof ? Not in my chest, that’s for sure.

It also doesn’t help that I’m the youngest person in my class. The cut-off birthday for starting kindergarten was September 15 and I just barely made it with a birthday on the fourteenth, so everyone is older than me. A fact that’s painfully obvious whenever we have to line up by height and I’m always at the end.

When I catch sight of the clock on my nightstand and realize how late I am, I abandon my search for the perfect outfit--it was hopeless anyway--grab the plastic bin that I keep on the bottom shelf of my closet, and make my way downstairs. But as I pass Rory’s room at the end of the hallway, I notice the door is half ajar, which is strange because my sister never leaves her door open even the slightest bit. She’s sixteen and in her supersecret spy phase, where no one is allowed to know anything about her business, least of all me.

I swear, with the amount of effort that goes into keeping everyone out of her room, you would think she was deciphering enemy launch codes in there or something.

Rory even takes baths with her bathing suit on, something I only know because I once accidentally walked in on her while she was in the bathtub. She yelled and yelled until I left with my arms covering my head, like I was running from a grenade explosion. I actually believed she might throw a shampoo bottle at me.

Later, after she’d calmed down, I asked her why she wore her bathing suit in the bathtub. She said it was because of pervy Peeping Toms like me who come barging into the bathroom when people are trying to take baths. I tried to argue that I wasn’t a pervy Peeping Tom, that it was just an accident, but her mind seemed to be made up on that.

I slow down and try to get a glimpse through the cracked door of Rory’s bedroom. This is a very rare occurrence: being able to steal a peek into my older sister’s bedroom when she’s not home. I’m careful not to actually touch the door, though, in case she decides to dust it for fingerprints later.

The room is a mess. You can barely see the top of her dresser because it’s covered with expensive makeup and her clothes are strewn everywhere.

I let out a sigh. If I had cool clothes like Rory, I would take better care of them. I wouldn’t just leave them in heaps on the floor. And what I wouldn’t give for just one of her eye shadow palettes. I’d even settle for a stupid tube of lip gloss. But no. My parents have a strict no-makeup-until-high-school rule. The last time I tried to go to school with just a smidgen of mascara on--praying that my mom wouldn’t notice--I got grounded for three days.

That’s the difference between being (almost) twelve and being sixteen. Sixteen is infinitely better.

My sister is popular and gorgeous and shops in the juniors department and has a car and a cute Boyfriend of the Week who takes her on dates to exciting places like the Human Bean (the coffee shop in town where all the teens go). And then there’s me. A freckle-faced, frizzy-haired, flat-chested loser who hangs out at home and plays board games with my parents while my dad, the King of the World’s Most Random Facts, drones on about the secret unknown history of Monopoly.

I bound down the stairs two at a time and take the shortcut through the living room to the front door. Mom hates it when I pass through the living room with shoes on because it’s supposed to be kept extra clean for when we have extra-special guests (which we never have).

“I’m going to Mrs. Toodles’s house!” I call out as I shift the plastic bin I’m holding under one arm so I can prop open the door.

“Did you just walk through the living room with your shoes on?” Mom calls back.

“No!” I lie, and slip through the door before she comes out of the kitchen to check.

Despite her power-smoothie blender brain, Mrs. Toodles is still my favorite person on Sherwood Drive, and I always look forward to visiting her. She reminds me of an old queen forced out of her kingdom who now roams the countryside looking for people to worship her. She’s quirky and funny and eats the strangest combinations of foods. Last week during my visit, she chowed down on a cucumber and peanut butter sandwich. It...