What's funnier than true love? Dumb love, that's what. Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson offers an exuberant romp -- somewhere between a screwball comedy of errors and a modern fairy tale.
In the tiny town of Brewerton, the minister needs an assistant for his Loney Hearts advice column, someone with a sympathetic, open heart and a confidential, closed mouth. Who better, Carlotta decides, than a Love Expert like herself. In fact, once Pete, her soon-to-be boyfriend -- he just doesn't know it yet -- gets a look at her, she'll be the syrup on his pancake, the cream in his coffee, the crabcake at his clam bake! All she has to do is get rid of her competition: Bernice, Andrea...and Fate.
What's funnier than true love? Dumb love, that's what. Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson offers an exuberant romp -- somewhere between a screwball comedy of errors and a modern fairy tale.
In the tiny town of Brewerton, the minister needs an assistant for his Loney Hearts advice column, someone with a sympathetic, open heart and a confidential, closed mouth. Who better, Carlotta decides, than a Love Expert like herself. In fact, once Pete, her soon-to-be boyfriend -- he just doesn't know it yet -- gets a look at her, she'll be the syrup on his pancake, the cream in his coffee, the crabcake at his clam bake! All she has to do is get rid of her competition: Bernice, Andrea...and Fate.
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Overview
What's funnier than true love? Dumb love, that's what. Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson offers an exuberant romp -- somewhere between a screwball comedy of errors and a modern fairy tale.
In the tiny town of Brewerton, the minister needs an assistant for his Loney Hearts advice column, someone with a sympathetic, open heart and a confidential, closed mouth. Who better, Carlotta decides, than a Love Expert like herself. In fact, once Pete, her soon-to-be boyfriend -- he just doesn't know it yet -- gets a look at her, she'll be the syrup on his pancake, the cream in his coffee, the crabcake at his clam bake! All she has to do is get rid of her competition: Bernice, Andrea...and Fate.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466874510 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Roaring Brook Press |
| Publication date: | 06/24/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| File size: | 206 KB |
| Age Range: | 12 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson is the author of three highly regarded novels for teens: The Parallel Universe of Liars, selected as an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, and Target and A Fast and Brutal Wing, both selected as ALA Best Books for Young Adults. She lives in Germantown, Maryland.
Read an Excerpt
Dumb Love
By Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson
Roaring Brook Press
Copyright © 2005 Kathleen Jeffrie JohnsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-7451-0
CHAPTER 1
Pow! A bullet flew through Rosalina's brain. Satisfied, Carlotta relaxed her fingers and leaned back in her chair. This was great!
She sat up straight again. No time to waste! Mrs. Taylor wouldn't be here forever. She flipped open the tiny spiral notepad she kept in the front pocket of her backpack and jotted down Mrs. Taylor's advice: Shoot the sheriff on the first page. Got it. There was obviously more to being a writer than going through a bunch of pain and suffering.
She glanced at Andrea and Walker, the only other takers of Mrs. Taylor's after-school writing seminar. Andrea, her butt as tiny as a frog in a thong, warmed a chair in Carlotta's American History class. Walker's ponytail, hanging limply over his shoulder, was as skinny as the rest of him. It was said he'd once eaten a live cockroach to impress a girl. Like, duh, it didn't work?
It was hard to believe they both had literary aspirations.
Mrs. Taylor turned a worried face toward the window. Outside, snow was falling like a delicate lace curtain. "Grab the reader's attention," she continued, her voice trailing off into a mumble.
Carlotta wrote that down. Next? She already had the names of her main characters picked out — Rosalina, or Rosie for short, and Armando. She was still working on the title, though. Forever Rosie —? Lying in Armando's Arms —?
She thumped her pencil impatiently as Mrs. Taylor continued to eye the weather. It was only a little early-spring snow. Just two or three inches, tops, were predicted. So far, maybe one. But ... she followed Mrs. Taylor's gaze out the window. Even one inch of snow on Whisper Mountain might show up in Mrs. Taylor's next novel. Why not?
Carlotta stared at Whisper. She'd been a mountain girl for almost five months. Enough time to fall in love with the steep, cold air. Enough time to wonder where her breath ended and the sky's began.
Enough time to turn up in somebody's novel.
"Run out of ideas already for Rosie and Armando?" Andrea leaned back in her chair, her raven hair brushing her shoulders. She practically needed to sit on a phone book to reach the keyboard. The little pipsqueak.
"Of course not." Carlotta sniffed. "I'm following Mrs. Taylor's professional advice. Rosalina is dead at the moment, just like she's supposed to be."
"Dead?" Walker looked up from his keyboard.
Carlotta rolled her eyes. "I believe she said shoot the sheriff on the first page? Maybe you should pay more attention." She eyed Walker. He wouldn't be so bad to look at if he took a little grooming advice. She leaned close. "You know," she whispered, "a good mouthwash should take care of the cockroach breath."
Walker pulled back, his lips twisting. "I never ate a damn cockroach!"
"I'm just trying to help," she hissed. Boys were so touchy!
Mrs. Taylor turned from the window. She'd driven all the way across Maryland, bearing north and west, climbing straight over the first mountain range to stop in Brewerton. Which is pretty much the same thing Carlotta and her mother, Lynette, had done, back in October, except they were here to help her mother's boyfriend, Franklin Thomas, get sober in the fresh, clean mountain air.
And so far it had worked. Several times.
They lived up Rassler Road, right below Whisper's granite belly, in a small wood cabin. True, Franklin Thomas was still wrestling with the bottle — pain and suffering, she wrote on her notepad. But — positive thinking, she added — he was also on day four of his fifth attempt to quit drinking and, as of this morning, was going strong. And — more good news — while her mother might be away on an unexpectedly long business trip, she was desperate to get home, as her letters and postcards testified.
In the meantime, thank goodness, Carlotta was here to take care of things!
She chewed her lip, studying the words on her computer screen. Rosalina lay dead in a pool of blood. Should she make this a murder mystery romance?
She'd been itching to start a romance novel ever since she'd heard that Mrs. Taylor would be coming to Brewerton High School on a one-day-only author visit, and would also be conducting a writing seminar that same afternoon. Despite Franklin Thomas's affinity for the bottle, and her mother's tendency to cling to wreckage, they went together like grits and gravy, so Carlotta knew all about romance. She'd been working on love for a long time.
She watched Walker rest his hands and stare at the screen, reading over his work. He was doing science fiction — cockroaches from Planet Zorg or something. And Andrea — what a cheat! When Carlotta had said she was writing a love story, Andrea immediately said that she was, too. As if! Her heroine, Delilah, didn't even have a boyfriend yet!
Carlotta pushed her mound of honey-blond corkscrew curls — her one gorgeousness — back from her face and wrinkled her nose. She did have a problem, though. Rosie was dead, and her story was only one page long. What to do?
She waved her hand in the air.
"Yes, Carlotta?" Mrs. Taylor tried to erase the snow worry from her face.
"Do I make it a ghost-story romance now, or what?"
"She didn't mean shoot her for real," Walker snorted.
"Yes, she did!" Walker was such a wanker. "That's what she said."
"Dead?" asked Mrs. Taylor.
"You said shoot her. Except she's not a sheriff." That might make a good plot line, though. As it stood, Rosie was a cheerleader in high school, falling in love with Armando, the football hero, who was about to fall in love back. Making her a dead cheerleading sheriff might give the story a needed twist.
Mrs. Taylor smiled wanly, touching the thin gold chain around her neck. "I was speaking metaphorically. Do you know what that means?"
"Means Carlotta's an Amazon, with a Juicy Fruit brain." Walker flipped his ponytail off his shoulder.
Like he was still so insulted about her mouthwash advice? Carlotta narrowed her eyes to scalpel-slits, slicing him to pieces. She could wrestle Walker to the ground with one hand. He leered back, showing his discolored, chipped front tooth.
"Please," said Mrs. Taylor.
"Of course I know what it means." Carlotta pursed her lips, twisting one of her corkscrew curls around her right index finger. "It's like what you use in a poem, right?"
"I just meant —"
"I can do her funeral in chapter two, then Rosie can haunt everybody for a while, solving crimes and stuff." There were bunches of romance novels with ghosts and murderers in them, weren't there? And she'd make her chapters really short. "Lots of people like ghost stories."
"Well —"
"A ghost story. I'm skeered," Walker cried, wrapping his arms around his skinny chest and pretending to shake.
Carlotta's face went hot. "Rosalina might be a ghost, but she's better than a bunch of dumb cockroaches from Planet Zorg."
"I don't have any damn cockroaches in my story!"
"Rosie might be incorporeal but she could rip your balls right off your stupid dick."
"Class!"
"Try it," Walker laughed.
"Balls aren't part of the dick," Andrea announced, leaning in so Walker could get a close-up of her petite, sweater-clad breasts. "While attached, they're a separate entity." She straightened her shoulders, as if to show off herseparate entities. It worked. Walker was focused.
"Whatever. They're coming off," said Carlotta, straightening her own shoulders, then thinking better of it. She could fit both of Andrea's powder puffs into one of her cups and have room left over for Taylor.
"Please!" said Mrs. Taylor.
Walker swiveled in his chair and raised himself slightly, thrusting his groin toward Carlotta. "Come and get 'em, Behemoth."
"What?" asked Carlotta.
"Means —"
"I know what it means." Did Walker think she was an ignoramus?!
"Giant," Andrea tittered.
"I think —" Mrs. Taylor's face was blotched red.
The door opened and the vice principal walked in, beaming. "How is everything coming along?" she asked. "What a wonderful opportunity this has been, to have Mrs. Taylor drive all the way —"
Carlotta stood up. "I quit," she said, moving toward the door as the vice principal stepped aside, her smile collapsing. "I don't need a stupid class to show me how to write. Especially one filled with turds who do not appreciate true romance. And I am not a behemoth."
"Whale!" yelled Walker.
"Blubber boobs!" giggled Andrea.
Carlotta slammed the door behind her. Five feet eight was not that big. And if she weighed — well, never mind. Most of it was due to big bones, and the rest was a gift from God, for pummeling doodleheads like Walker. Andrea was such a nit she couldn't help herself. But Walker — she turned the handle and stuck her head back into the room.
"You are sandwich loaf, Walker. Say good-bye to your nuts." She shut the door again. You had to be tough with boys.
CHAPTER 2Walking down snow-dusted Main Street, Carlotta paused in front of Frostie's Ice Cream Parlor, chewing on the end of her pencil. What would be a good name for Rosalina's new archrival? Oh! Smiling, she wrote down Andrea.
Bla-a-a-a-p!
Carlotta jumped, almost dropping her pencil and notepad.
"Hey, fatso!" someone hooted from the car roaring past.
"Stupid dickhead!" she shrieked, giving the vehicle her middle finger. "Blow your horn at breakfast!" she yelled as it barreled out of sight. She'd just about reached her limit with rude boys! Not that girls were any better.
Waiting a moment to regain her composure — it was important for an author to be poised in public — she opened Frostie's front door, the bell tinkling as she went in. This was day four of Franklin Thomas's fifth attempt to quit drinking, and he needed ice cream. Lots of it. "Soothes the stomach," he'd said that morning, patting his tummy and wincing, refusing the fried sausage link she'd held out to him on a fork. "And it helps the soul."
Besides ice cream, Frostie's doubled as a tiny market specializing in cigarettes and beer, motor oil, paper towels, and tampons. It also had a small newsstand, plus a locked display of personal lubricants and condoms way in the back of the store.
Like anybody would want to approach Mrs. Martin for that key?
Mrs. Martin, Frostie's owner and proprietor, and general all-around grump, glared at Carlotta. "It doesn't become a young lady to curse on the street like a common sailor. You might remember that." She pushed back several graying curls that had escaped the bun on top of her head, and tried to pin Carlotta to the wall with steely eyes.
"Two pints of vanilla, please, and one strawberry." Carlotta stared Mrs. Martin down. "They aren't for me."
Mrs. Martin sniffed. "No business of mine if they are. You paying?"
"Put it on Franklin Thomas's tab. He'll pay like he always does, when he gets his check." He was on disability from an old construction job. Though, he was such a small, wiry man, it was hard to imagine just what kind of constructing he'd been able to do.
Carlotta flipped open her notepad and jotted down dead construction worker as a possible crime for Sheriff Rosie to solve. The door tinkled and Carlotta looked up to see Pastor Willis push his way into the store. Uh-oh. He was one of the ministers who had shown up at their cabin on Rassler Road, trying to convince Franklin Thomas and her mother to exchange wedding rings.
Marriage between Franklin Thomas and her mother was actually something Carlotta hoped for herself, as, before Franklin Thomas had come along, her mother had had a tendency to hook up with more men than was strictly necessary.
She gave Pastor Willis a little wave. As Franklin Thomas said, it never hurt to stay on the good side of the clergy.
"Pastor," Mrs. Martin said, nodding.
Pastor Willis smiled nervously. "Mrs. Martin." He cleared his throat. "Paper in yet?"
Mrs. Martin tilted her head toward the small rack of periodicals and newspapers at the side of the store. "First thing this morning, just like always."
He glanced at Carlotta, then disappeared between the aisles.
Did the pastor remember his visit up Rassler Road? Her mother and Franklin Thomas had had to turn down his invitation to marry them because she was still legally joined to Carlotta's father, who remained missing, and good riddance. And Franklin Thomas was pretty sure he still had a wife somewhere, probably in Tennessee or Virginia. He'd decided to send off for information.
"Never lose track of your loved ones," he told Carlotta, after Pastor Willis had left. Setting his beer aside, he spooned hot vanilla pudding, her favorite dessert, into a bowl to cool. "Keep in touch even if they profess to never want to see you again. It just might happen that someday you'll need to obtain their signature on a legal document."
Mrs. Martin reached into the waist-high freezer. "A quart of vanilla is cheaper than two pints," she said, her arm still in the freezer.
"Pints, please."
Mrs. Martin sighed and pulled out the three containers. She plopped them into a plastic bag and dropped them on the counter. "Now it's back to the ice cream. It'll be beer again soon, mark my words. Lord's sake, there's an AA meeting right here in Brewerton. A man with sense would think to give it a try."
"Franklin Thomas believes in clean air and exercise," Carlotta huffed. "He's doing fine."
Mrs. Martin crossed her arms over her chest. "It's not right, you living up Whisper in that rundown shack with a man who isn't your father, and your mother gone."
"It's not a shack. It's a cabin. And Mom's on her way back." She was, too — Carlotta had just gotten a postcard from her three days ago, mailed from Fantown, PA. Be home soon, little ladybug, she'd written with her fountain pen, the words only slightly smudged. Love ya, Mom. She was traveling through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, trying to sell her hand-crocheted Easter bunnies to different shops and stores. She'd sold only six bunnies so far, but the future is wide open, she'd written in a letter to Carlotta.
"I've a mind to call the authorities."
Mrs. Martin's husband, Mr. Harvey Martin, was the authority: the sheriff of Brewerton, population slightly more than squat. Rumor had it that a lady friend in their much larger neighboring town, Stafford, kept him company. Whether Mrs. Martin's grumpiness had started before or after this marital event was hard to figure.
"Franklin Thomas takes good care of me," Carlotta asserted. He did, too. Having once spent a little time in the slammer for passing a couple of bad checks, he was something of an authority on trouble, and regularly filled Carlotta in on the dangers of going astray.
Pastor Willis returned to the counter, a copy of the Stafford Weekly tucked under his arm. "It says in the paper that Miss Julie is looking for a young assistant to help read and sort through her mail. Guess everybody's sending in their troubles these days. It's best to get things off your chest, don't you think?"
Mrs. Martin sniffed. "Through a local advice column? Miss Julie's Words of Wisdom is a waste of time. Get up, get out of the house, and get a job, I say. Hard work solves most of life's problems." She rang up the paper and held out her hand, looking meaningfully at Pastor Willis. "It solved mine."
Pastor Willis cleared his throat. "Indeed." He dropped a few coins into Mrs. Martin's hand, then turned to leave. Stopping, he looked at Carlotta. "It looks like you're a writer, young lady."
"Um, yes." Carlotta's notepad burned in her hand. She flipped it shut and tucked it into her backpack.
"You might consider applying for the position. Someone good with a pencil might understand the hard work that goes into pouring out one's heart onto the page." He glanced at Mrs. Martin. "Opening up is not a bad thing, you know." He paused a moment, looking pained. Getting no response from Mrs. Martin, he took his paper and left.
"Just what we need," muttered Mrs. Martin. "A pastor who reads Miss Julie and a teenager who gives advice. What's the world coming to?" She shook her head and disappeared into the little room behind the counter.
Carlotta picked up her ice cream bag. There was nothing wrong with giving advice. She gave it all the time.
She stepped out of Frostie's as dusk swooped down from Whisper Mountain like an oil slick. Because of Mrs. Taylor's class, she'd missed the school bus, but she had enough time before dark to make it to Marty Fortunetta's gas station. He had religion almost as bad as Pastor Willis, but he was okay. She'd ask his nephew, Pete, to take her up Rassler Road.
Pete Antonio Fortunetta, whose great-grandfather had come here as a young man from sunny Italy, was a senior at Brewerton High. He worked part-time for Marty, and talked to Carlotta, a lowly junior, only because a month ago, on a cold, rainy morning, she had saved his dog, Wind-Up, from the side of busy Route 109 — another minute trying to dodge the big trucks screaming past on their way to the Interstate, and Wind-Up would have been hamburger patty. Dog patty.
She'd never told Pete what she was doing on the side of the road. He'd never asked. Pete, needing to work off his gratitude, gave Carlotta rides up Rassler Road whenever she asked. Which wasn't often. She had to stretch his payments out, keeping each moment with him special.
He had shiny brown curls that tickled his ears. He had cornflower blue eyes. He had a football letter stitched to his jacket. He was Armando.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dumb Love by Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson. Copyright © 2005 Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson. Excerpted by permission of Roaring Brook Press.
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