Free Happily Ever Emma by Sally Warner Page A

“Nothing’s perfect, Mom. Like you always say. And maybe Annabelle doesn’t even count.”
    “Now, how do you figure that?” Mom asks, as if she really wants to know.
    “They eloped,” I say, spelling it out for her. “So we didn’t even get to go to the wedding. We don’t have any proof. ”
    “Well,” Mom says, “I agree that you should have been there, Emma. But I’m not all that sorry I missed it.” Now she is even smiling a little.
    “And anyway,” I say, trying to ignore the smile, “I don’t believe in divorce.”
    I heard Cynthia Harbison’s mom say this once—to a couple of mothers in front of school. She sounded pretty sure of herself.
    “I never used to believe in divorce either,” my mom snaps back. “Nevertheless, I’m here to tell you that it exists whether I want it to or not.”
    I am a little scared of how angry she looks. Who is she mad at, though? Me? My dad?
    Annabelle?
    Divorce?
    My mom scoops me into a hug. “Look, Emma,” she says, her voice muffled by my tangly brown hair, which will never look like TV hair in a hundred years. “This is just one Friday night. There will be plenty of others. And you always have fun with Anthony.”
    “Yeah, but he can be extremely aggravating , Mom,” I inform her.
    “Oh, Emma,” Mom says, laughing. “Where did you come from, sweetie?”
    “San Diego,” I tell her a little sourly. “Remember?”
    Mom shakes her head and sighs. “Well, grab your puffy jacket,” she says, glancing at her watch. “We can look at some pretty Christmas lights on the way to Anthony’s house, if you hurry. I think that big house on the corner finally got those funny-looking reindeer hoisted up onto the roof.”
    “I wish we still had a house,” I grumble. “I wish we had funny-looking reindeer.”
    “Don’t start in on that,” my mother says, raising her warning finger again. “You know perfectly well we never got around to putting up decorations even when we did have a house.”
    “Not perfectly well,” I say again.

    “You’re telling me,” my mom says, laughing some more.

2
    Anthony the Barbarian
    “My mother is on a date,” I tell Anthony gloomily, trying out the word—not that my mom’s so-called social life is any of his business. I am sitting amid what looks like a sea of LEGOs on his bedroom floor. Anthony Scarpetto has toys in boxes he hasn’t even opened yet! And he has a million relatives, and a mom and a dad who are still married to each other, and everybody loves him.
    I guess people love me, too, only they’re scattered all over the world.
    Well, scattered all over London, England.
    “A date? Like Barbie?” Anthony asks, interested. His brown eyes sparkle.
    “Yeah,” I say. “Except Barbie isn’t real.”
    “She is too real,” Anthony tells me. “Natalie at school has one. I seen it.”
    “‘I saw it,’” I say, correcting him.
    “So you know Barbie’s real,” he says, probably wondering why I am arguing with him.
    Spend five minutes with Anthony and you too will feel like you just walked into a wall.
    “Can you take this apart?” he asks, giving up on the mysterious LEGO lump he has been wrestling with so hard that his plump cheeks are even pinker than usual. “I need the blue one in the middle,” he says, pointing to it.
    “They’re all the same shape, Anthony,” I tell him wearily.
    “Ant,” he says.
    “What?” I ask, trying to pry apart the LEGOs, which seem to be stuck together with glue. Or oatmeal.
    “My name’s Ant, now,” he says, sneaking a look at me out of the corner of his eye to see how I am taking this stupendous news. “We all have nicknames in Miss Becky’s class,” he adds, trying to sound grown-up.

    “What about Natalie?” I say, still working on the stuck LEGOs.
    He frowns, suspicious. “How do you know Natalie?” he asks.
    “You just told me about her,” I say. “And she doesn’t have a nickname.”
    “Yes she does,” Anthony says. “Natalie is her