By Mary Rodgers

Preliminary Information

Before I do anything else, I'd better list some basic facts about myself, my brother, and my friend.

Basic Facts About Myself

I am fourteen years old, five foot four and still growing (I hope). I have brown eyes, brown hair (mousy), and I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds before breakfast. (If you don't want to be depressed, before breakfast is the only time to get on a scale.)

My parents, Ellen Jean Benjamin Andrews and William Waring Andrews, my brother Ape Face (on the birth certificate it says Benjamin but to me he's Ape Face), our dog Max, and I live in an apartment on Central Park West in New York City. I'm in the ninth grade at the Barden School where I do pretty well when I try and, according to my teachers, "surprisingly well" even when I don't. The subjects I try at are English, current events, history, and biology. Home economics, which we have once a week, I don't try at. I'm going to be a journalist when I grow up, and my husband will simply have to accept the fact that I don't cook, clean, or iron shirts. Not that there's anything demeaning about housework, but unlike my mother, I'm not the domestic type. You know what she said to me the other day? She said, "Annabel, you are an incorrigible slob."

I said, "No, I'm not, Ma. You and I have different standards, that's all."

"Yes," she said. "Mine are higher."

Oh well, maybe now that she's started taking courses full-time at Columbia University, she'll be forced to lower hers. I hope so, because except for fights about my neatness, I would say we have an excellent relationship.

My father is an account executive at an advertising agency called Joffert and Jennings. Last year, he handled New Improved Fosphree; but then the EPA discovered it was killing all the fish in the Schoharie Reservoir, and the product was taken off the market. Just as well.

The company used to send us a ton of the stuff free every month and it turned all the laundry gray. Personally, I was hoping he'd get assigned to a candy account-free chocolate bars every month would have been sensational-but instead he got Merrill Lynch which is a big brokerage firm and doesn't send you anything.

Generally speaking, I have an excellent relationship with my father, too. The only trouble with him is he works too hard and worries about money too much. Other than that, he's a neat guy and fairly unsquare, considering his age. (Thirty-nine.)

Basic Facts About Ape Face

He is seven years old, four feet something-or-other and still growing (I assume). He has blue eyes, ashblond hair (but in a couple of years it'll turn mousy, I'll bet), and I don't know what he weighs. All I know is he's one of those kids who eats everything that's put in front of him and then some and never gets fat. He must be shot with luck.

Incidentally, in case you're curious about his nickname, I started calling him that the day he came home from the hospital. I was six and a half, and at that age if you're planning on a sister and what you get instead is a male monkey, you're not inclined to mince words.

"It's got a face like an ape," I said, giving it a cautious poke. "What's it called?"

"Benjamin. Or Ben, if you like that better," said my mother, trying to be accommodating.

"I like Ape Face better."

"Well, he won't," said my mother firmly. "It'll only make him mad."

But it didn't. That's what's so funny. I only recently found out that all those years I was calling him Ape Face to make him mad, I was only making my mother mad. Ape Face loved it. I think he feels it gives him a kind of macho authority. Sometimes he lopes around the apartment saying things like, "Annabel, you're not supposed to put your feet on the coffee table," and when I say, "Who says?" he says, "The Ape says," and pounds his chest like a twelve-foot gorilla. Other times, he just stands there embarrassing me in front of my friends by pushing his lower lip out with his tongue, scratching his ribs with his left paw, picking imaginary cooties out of his hair and eating them with the right paw, and grunting, "Unh, unh, unh." It's really disgusting. I should have stuck with the name Ben. Or Benjie. Actually, when I get mad enough, that's exactly what I do call him and it makes him furious. Shows what mothers know.

If you liked chapter one of ESP TV, find out more about the book.

Go back to the index of first chapters of new books for Fall 1999.