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go,” and she pretends to be one of the Seven Dwarfs . . . . Dopey, I think.
    Max says that he’s the eighth dwarf, Hungry.
    I pretend to be the grown-up, lecturing them on taking the job seriously and telling them not to eat so much of the batter (which I keep doing).

    Our faces are covered with chocolate.
    Max has just made a tuna–jelly-bean brownie.
    My mother looks at his brownie and makes retching noises.
    She’s decorated her marshmallow brownie with sprinkles.

    I’m filling my brownie with Gummi worms crawling through it and over it.
    The phone rings.
    It’s my father.

Chapter
Fifteen

    “Hi, honey.” My dad sounds like he’s practically next door, not all the way in Paris, France. “How are you?”
    “Fine,” I say.
    “What are you doing?”
    I don’t want to mention the good time that Max, Mom, and I are having, so I say, “Not much.”
    “I miss you so much. Do you miss me?”
    “Yes, Daddy, I miss you bunches.”
    I sit in the living room, talking on the phone.
    My mother and Max are in the kitchen.

    “I miss you,” I repeat.
    “How much?” He’s smiling . . . I can tell by his voice.
    “This much.” I spread my arms as far as I can while holding the phone between my shoulder and my ear.
    “And how much is that?” he says, playing the I-love-you-this-much game we’ve always played with each other.
    “To the next universe,” I tell him.
    “To the farthest galaxy,” he tells me. “I love you and miss you that much.”
    I try to imagine what he’s looking like at the other end.
    I haven’t seen my father for a couple of months, not since last summer when my aunt Pam took me to London, England.
    I was supposed to visit him in Paris for a week but then I got the stupid chicken pox and he came to London instead.
    We only got to spend a couple of days together.
    And even though we talk on the phone every week, it’s not the same.
    Just before I start to tell him some stuff about me, he starts talking about what he’s been doing, how he went to Euro Disney with a friend of his from work . . . . . . . and with her little boy.
    I was supposed to go to Euro Disney with him last summer.
    The stupid chicken pox.
    All I have is a Euro Disney sweatshirt that my dad sent me before I even went to England.
    “Who is your friend, the one with the little boy?” I twirl the phone wire. “Did her husband go too?”
    There’s a pause for a minute, and then my dad says, “They’re divorced. You know, Amber, you’d really like Judith and her son, Todd. He’s the cutest little six-year-old. I’ve been spending a lot of time with them lately.”
    I think,
Here we go again
.
    I’m just getting used to Max. Now I have to find out about Judith and Todd.
    I say nothing for a minute, and then, “Cuter than when I was six?”
    “No one was cuter than my Amber,” he says.
    My stomach starts to hurt.
    I wonder if I’ve been eating too much brownie batter.
    My father continues. “Maybe you can come over here during Christmas vacation and meet them . . . . . I’m sure that you’ll really like them . . . and we’ll finally be able to spend some time together.”
    There’s so much to think about.
    I’m getting a headache.
    A headache . . . . . a stomachache . . . . maybe it’s the attack of a killer flu that suddenly attacks nine-year-old girls who have eaten too much brownie batter. Maybe it’s a telephone virus.

    I don’t want to meet this stupid Judith person and her stupid little dweeb son, who get to spend time with my father in Euro Disney when I hardly ever get to see him.
    Why did my father even have to mention them?
    This is my phone call, my time with him.
    “Amber, I really miss you so much. Tell me what you’ve been doing. I feel like I’m missing so much.”
    “You could move back,” I tell him.
    “I can’t, not yet.” He sighs. “We’ve been through this already. It’s my job . . . . and I need to earn money. I’ve got a lot