Babyface - Mazer, Norma Fox at booksXYZ

Babyface
Mazer, Norma Fox
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BOOK SUMMARY
Fourteen-year-old Toni has always felt lucky--but her luck begins to change the summer her father suffers a near-fatal heart attack, her best friend moves away, and Toni is sent to New York City stay with her older sister, Martine, who reveals a devastati

BOOK SYNOPSIS
Fourteen-year-old Toni has always felt lucky--but her luck begins to change the summer her father suffers a near-fatal heart attack, her best friend moves away, and Toni is sent to New York City stay with her older sister, Martine, who reveals a devastating secret about their family.

BOOK EXCERPTS
CHAPTER 1
TONI HAD ALWAYS thought of herself as lucky. Toni Luck, she called it. She was lucky in her parents, lucky to have Julie. Those were the big things. But what about the little things, like the way Paws had come to her, just showed up at their house one day and stayed? Pure luck. Or how about the way she was always finding money in the street? Usually it was only a quarter or a dime, but once she had found a ten-dollar bill, and another time a silver dollar. Julie said Toni was probably the only kid in the world who could take a casual walk anywhere and pick up her allowance on the way.
�Tonis lucky feeling about herself was why she wasnt even that surprised when a reporter from the Ridgewood Record wanted to write a story about her and Julie. Julie was the one who got excited. This could be important. What if a Hollywood producer sees my picture
�Julie, I really dont think they read the Record in Hollywood, Toni said.
�But what if one did and saw me and thought, By Jove, that girl is photogenic and has talent!
�Dont think they say by Jove, either, Jul.
�Shut up, Toni.
�Whatever you say, Julie.
�The Ridgewood Record came out once a week with news and articles about people in their town. Small-town paper, only about eight pages and filled with ads, the features squeezed in between. How the paper happened to run the article about her and Julie was, Toni thought, like a Rube Goldberg contraption. The kind of thing where you press a button and a window flies open, which hits someone in the head, who falls down and knocks over a chair, which breaks a dish, which wakes the baby, who bites the dog.
�The button in this case was Mrs. Abish, a widow who lived across the street at 92 Oak. One Sunday morning she got a yen for pancakes and noticed she didnt have any maple syrup. She got on her three-speed bike and rode over to Paulsons Market, a mom-and-pop store on Poplar Avenue that was open from seven in the morning to midnight, seven days a week. Mr. Paulson happened to be in bed with a cold that day, so Mrs. Paulson was unusually busy, which was why she didnt know someone had broken a bottle of syrup right at the end of aisle three. Which was why Mrs. Abish, coming around the corner, walked right into the sticky mess, slipped, and went flat on her back.
�It must have been a glorious sight, me flailin around on the floor like a fat fish, she said to anyone who would listen. Really she wasnt fat so much as large, or what Tonis mother kindly called well padded. Look at me. I used to be a slip of a girl. Im this way from the grand food in this country, Mrs. Abish would say. She had been born in Ireland and rolled her rs wonderfully.
�She came home from the hospital with her leg in a cast. It was the beginning of spring vacation for Julie and Toni, and they didnt have that much to do, so they started going across the street to see if they could help Mrs. Abish, run to the store for her, or whatever. (Actually it had been Tonis mothers idea to begin with.)
�Mrs. Abish was delighted. Is that you, loves? shed call when she heard their steps on the porch. Inside, shed be sitting on the couch with her leg extended on a stool. Toni and Julie would sit down and talk to her for a while, then theyd dust or wash the dishes, whatever she wanted done. One day toward the end of va�cation, when they went over, Mrs. Abishs niece was visiting. Patricia Abish was a reporter, and Mrs. Abish had told her all about Julie and Toni. That was the beginning of the article. They were interviewed, they were photographed, everything very professional.
�The day the story appeared, Julie read the article out loud, with appropriate gestures. In this day and age, when so manyarms spread widecherishedhand to heart traditions have disappearedhand over eye, peering into the distanceand parents wonder . . .
�They spread the newspaper out on the floor and checked out the pictures. You can hardly see me, Toni said. In every picture (there were three) she was looking down, looking away, or more or less hanging out behind Julie. Not great, but she wasnt photogenic like Julie.
�My lips are sticking out, Julie said. Look at them, they poke out. Do they always stick out like that?
�Julie, your lips are beautiful. Youve got full lips.
�Julie stared at herself in the mirror, front face, then at each profile. I might have to have my lips fixed. Some people get themselves full lips. Ill get mine cut down.
�Julie, ugh! Sick. Dont ever do anything like that.
�Oh, I couldnt, anyway, it costs a huge amount of money. You have to be rich.
�Tonis parents bought a dozen extra copies of the newspaper. Her mother clipped the article and sent it to everyone: to Tonis sister, Martine, in New York City; to her uncle in Paris; to her grandmother in Los Angeles. Her father framed a copy for the family room. He laminated another copy and took it with him to the fire station. The last time hed tacked an article on the bulletin board there had been three years ago when the Record had run a feature titled Men as Cooks. Theyd printed Tonis fathers picture and his recipe for Pizza-in-a-Hurry.
�For a while it seemed as if Toni couldnt go anywhere in the neighborhood without someone saying, I saw your picture in the paper. A kid she didnt even know passed her and Julie on his bike and yelled, I read about you two! Mrs. Frankowitz, who lived in the corner house, stopped Toni to say shed had an article written about her once, too. I was even younger than you. I won a gymnastic competition, she said, smiling, showing tiny gray teeth.
�What made it all even more embarrassing was that Patricia Abish had gotten so many things wrong. For instance, Tonis mother wasnt manager of Rite Bargain Drugs, she was assistant manager. Julies father was a salesman, not a businessman. And Mrs. Jensen hadnt even started her door-to-door cosmetics business until a year ago. Little details like that.
�There were other things, too. Shed written that Toni and Julies parents were good friends, but really, it was more in the line of good neighbors who got together once or twice a year for a barbecue in the backyard. And Toni wished she only were slight. That sounded a lot better to her than skinny. Gaining weight was a big struggle. She had these elbows and kneespointy, bony things. Julie said she could always use them as weapons in hand-to-hand combat. �Patricia Abish did get Julie right, tagging her as blond and blue-eyed, except that sounded so bland, so vanilla pudding. Exactly what Julie wasnt.
�What bugs me, Julie said, is that I never said you and I were alike.
�I think she was being ironic, Jul, Toni said.
�Whatever, Julie said. I could list a hundred differences. Starting with cats. Julie tolerated Paws for Tonis sake. But I dont forget that hes one of the sneaky tribe, she always said. Hell lick your hand, then go out and kill an innocent bird.
�Its cat nature to hunt, Toni said. They dont do it to be cruel. They dont have a concept of cruelty. Thats human beings. Paws leaped up on Tonis lap. He was always a little skittery around Julie, but Toni still kept trying to bring the two of them together.
�Want to hold him, Jul? She cuddled Paws. He was a small, cream-streaked-with-chocolate cat, some Siamese in his ancestry somewhere. When people play with pets, their heartbeat slows down and it calms them.
�My heartbeat can slow down when I get old, Toni.
�Youre missing a lot. A cat is a friend forever.
�Calling Hallmark Cards! Spare me the slop. I do not need a four-legged slimeball killer for a friend, Toni.
�Toni kissed Pawss little heart-shaped face and whispered in his ear not to mind Julie. She was used to Julies harangues. It was part of the way they balanced each other: Toni was dark, Julie blond. Toni was slight, Julie not. Toni was shy, Julie outspoken. That really was their biggest difference.�
�Copyright � 1990 by Norma Fox Mazer
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/ contact or mailed�to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

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MORE BOOK INFO
ISBN: 0152062777
ISBN(13-digit): 0152062777
Dewey Decimal: [Fic]
Library of Congress: 2006025394
Book Publisher: Harcourt Childrens Books
Language: ENG
No. of Pages: 176

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