Rocking Out!

  For Maisie O. Baronian,

  who is a rock star in my eyes.—AJS

  Thanks as always to everyone at Penguin: Francesco Sedita, Bonnie Bader, Scottie Bowditch, my editor, Jordan Hamessley, and also, of course, to Doreen Mulryan Marts, who draws Frannie just like I’d pictured her. Your support and enthusiasm is unparalleled! To Julie Barer, who negotiates like nobody’s business and to my family and friends for support. And of course to my nieces and nephews: Maisie, Mia, Lili, Adam, and Nathan, without whom I’d have lost touch long ago with the bane and beauty of kid linguistics.—AJS

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Text copyright © 2012 by AJ Stern. Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011046445

  ISBN 978-1-101-56906-1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Coming Soon

  Every day something happens in Chester, New York. A for instance of what I mean is just yesterday we found out that our neighbors, the Demirs, are moving back to Istanbul. That’s where they’re from. It’s a scientific fact that Istanbul is in a place called Turkey, and that is not an opinion. That was really sad news.

  And today, my teacher, Mrs. Pellington, told us some news that became the second bad news of the week. The recreation center across the street from school might shut down! Noah Zark came to Chester, New York, six months ago and opened up a recreation center called Noah’s Ark. If you say Noah Zark out loud, it sounds like Noah’s Ark. Isn’t that fantastical? I would love for my name to do something twice like that. But it just says Frannie Miller. Frankly when I’m working. Mrs. Frankly B. Miller on envelopes.

  Noah’s Ark is the most amazingish place where all the town kids go after school. It’s only been alive for a very short time, but it’s very, very popular. That doesn’t always happen for new places. However and nevertheless, even though they are very popular, they still haven’t made enough money. The very seriousal part is that if they don’t make enough money to pay their rent next month, they will have to close down forever!

  Everyone loves Noah’s Ark. Even adults. They have café tables and coffee, which are two things adults really love. There is ice cream, too, and Noah names the flavors after kids who do something amazingish. If you get on the honor roll or score a big goal or get an A plus, like that. I don’t have an ice-cream flavor named for me yet. There is a theater where kids put on plays and comfy couches where the older kids can do their homework. You can dress up using the big costume box or draw a millionty pictures using their foreverteen amount of art supplies. And on rainy days on the weekend, and sometimes even after school, they show movies! Everybody wanted to save the Ark. That is why all the adults had a meeting to come up with just how to do that.

  Tonight, my babysitter, Tenley, who is also my best friend Elliott’s babysitter, let Elliott and me stand by the front door to wait for my parents to come home after the meeting. Elliott was going to eat dinner with us when my parents got home.

  Elliott and I stared out the front window. I could not wait to hear about all the geniusal ideas they came up with to save the Ark. I kept thinking I heard my parents, but each time it was actually the Demirs getting ready to have a big sale over the weekend. Since they were moving to Turkey, they had to sell a lot of their things. So they were planning to have a sale outside their house.

  I liked the Demirs, and I was very sad they were leaving. Especially because they have a very big dog named Winston Churchill who I love to play with. My parents don’t think I’m responsible enough for a pet, so sometimes I pretend Winston Churchill is mine. Just when I thought I heard the Demirs again, I saw headlights, and Elliott and I realized that this time it was actually my parents!

  I was jumping up and down waiting for them to get inside. Elliott was bouncing a little bit, but not full jumping. The second the door opened, I started to ask them very important questions.

  “Well? Did anyone come up with good ideas? What were the ideas? Anything geniusal?”

  They smiled and my mom kissed me.

  “Hi, love,” she said to my head top. “Hi, Elliott,” she said, rustling his hair with one hand and handing my dad her coat with the other.

  “Hi, Mrs. Miller,” Elliott said.

  “Let us get a little settled, Birdy,” my dad said, walking to the coat closet. My dad is the only person who calls me Birdy. Bird is my middle name. (Elliott knows, but please don’t tell anyone else about that fact.)

  “Tenley, we’re home!” my mother called. Tenley came out of the living room.

  When my mom went to the kitchen, I followed her, and Elliott followed me. Then my dad came in, and Tenley followed him! My mom put on the kettle for tea. Everyone except me sat down at the kitchen table. My legs were too excitified to do any knee-bending.

  “I am too suspensified!” I said, jumping in the air just once. “If I don’t find out what happened at the meeting, my skin is going to fall off!”

  “Well, everyone had very good ideas,” my mom said. “But it was your father who had the best idea!”

  I looked at my dad with the biggest pride-itity in my eyes. “What was your idea?” I asked him.

  “A rock concert. We’ll have a famous musician play a concert at the Ark and raise money to save it.”

  “That is the most geniusal idea that my brain has ever heard,” I told him as I went over and sat on his geniusal lap.

  “Who’
s going to give the concert?” Elliott asked.

  “That’s just the thing,” my dad said. “We don’t know any famous musicians!”

  I was stumpified. I looked at Tenley, but she shrugged and made her “I don’t know any famous musicians, either” face.

  “It’s officially a contest,” my mom explained, sitting down at the table with us with her hot tea.

  “What do you mean?” Tenley asked.

  “Everyone can propose an idea, and if Noah picks your idea, then you’ll get an ice-cream flavor named after you.”

  That was my absolute life dream. I knew right then that I had to make the best musician suggestion possible, otherwise I would never get a flavor named after me.

  “What if he doesn’t like any of the ideas?” I asked, getting a little worrified.

  “He has that all worked out,” my dad started to explain. “He’s friends with some of the local bands, and they said they’d be happy to play if he couldn’t find a rock star.”

  “Can Elliott and I be excused, please?” I asked.

  Elliott looked at me, confused.

  “We have to hold a very important meeting in my office,” I told my parents.

  Elliott raced after me as I ran to my bedroom, which was also my office. When we got there, Elliott still looked confusified.

  “We have to think of the musician, Elliott. We have to win the contest and get flavors named after us.”

  That’s when Elliott immediately lay down on my bed and stared at the ceiling. This is how he does his best thinking. I paced back and forth because sometimes when I distractify my brain, it comes up with some of its best ideas.

  Elliott sat up quickly. “Who is Eliza Doolittle again?” he asked.

  “She was in the movie My Fair Lady,” I told him.

  “Oh,” he said, and flopped back down on his back. I paced. Elliott flung himself back up. “The Von Trapp family—wait! Never mind, they’re not real, either.” He went back down to think again. “Violet Beauregarde!” he called, jumping back up.

  “She’s from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” I reminded him. “And she’s not a musician!”

  “I don’t think I’m very good at this,” Elliott said.

  That was true, actually. I wasn’t much better, though, because I couldn’t even think of one singer. Sometimes when you really have to get your brain together, it dries out and there is nothing there. It is very frusterizing.

  “Dinner!” my mom called. That put an end to our very important meeting. I raced down to dinner and Elliott raced after me.

  “Billy Elliot!” he called behind me.

  “From a musical!” I yelled back.

  Elliott loved to eat dinner at my house. He loved it because both my parents were very good cooks, so no matter who made dinner, Elliott knew it would be very delicious. Elliott’s parents are divorced. Even though his dad lives down the block from Elliott, it was still very sad. However and nevertheless, Elliott’s mom had a new boyfriend named George. He was a friend of my dad’s, actually. George wasn’t at Elliott’s house tonight, and Elliott’s mom was the most terriblist cook. So Elliott chose us.

  After we raised our glasses and clicked them together and said, “To the Millers!” Elliott and I admitted that we didn’t come up with anything good in our meeting. Which made my parents think about the musicians they loved from the olden days. The bands they loved had the weirdiest names ever. One band my dad liked was called Talking Heads. Another was named the Goo Goo Dolls, and my mom loved a band called the Squirrel Nut Zippers. When she said that, Elliott and I almost toppled out of our chairs, we were laughing so hard. Just when we stopped laughing, I thought of something. I didn’t mean to interrupt, but sometimes my mouth has a brain of its own.

  “Aimee Chapman!” I blurted out.

  My parents and Elliott stopped talking. They all looked at me.

  “Aimee Chapman,” my dad said, like it was a statement type of sentence.

  “Aimee Chapman,” my mom said in a “that is the most geniusal idea I’ve ever heard in my worldwide life” voice.

  “Aimee Chapman,” Elliott said in his “I cannot believe that my best friend is the smartest person who was ever born on this planet” voice.

  Aimee Chapman is a very famous singer who even has songs in movies. She is a grown-up type of singer, but she is funnish, so everyone loves her, kids and adults. She wears stylish clothes, like swirly colored scarves and hats with feathers in them and blazers that are too big for her. They make her look sometimes like she is going to an office. That is one of my favorite parts about her, outside of her songs, which I really love and know all the words to. I’ve seen pictures of her, and she even carries her guitar in a guitar type of briefcase. That makes me feel like we would be very good friends and be understandable of each other.

  Aimee Chapman was the right person for the job of saving Noah’s Ark. We all felt that way. That was why after dinner, my parents, Elliott, and I jumped into the car and drove over to the Ark to tell Noah. We all ran to the front door and knocked.

  “Come on, Noah!” I said out loud. “Please be inside.”

  We knocked again.

  When we were convinced he’d gone home for the day, we headed back to the car and, just then, Noah opened the door!

  “Noah!” I called.

  Elliott and I ran back to the door and my parents followed us.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  That’s when I looked at him, and in my most seriousal and professional voice of ever I said, “Aimee Chapman.”

  Then he broke out into a very handsome smile, nodded his head, and said her name.

  “Aimee Chapman,” he said in his most official “you have won this contest. There will be a very special flavor of ice cream named after you” voice.

  Noah’s Ark was going to get much more excitifying. Everyone heard the news that Aimee Chapman was the person who Noah was going to ask to play the concert. I felt the biggest pride-itity of ever inside myself. The day after I said the words Aimee Chapman to Noah, my friends and I ran to the Ark after school to see if she’d said yes yet.

  “We just asked her this morning!” Noah told us, laughing. “We probably won’t hear until the end of the week,” he said.

  Millicent, Elliott, Elizabeth, and I all looked at one another with “until the end of the week?????” eyeballs. We could not wait that long. That is when I got an honestly geniusal idea. I motioned for everyone to follow me downstairs.

  While they sat down at a table, I ran to get colored pens and paper.

  “We’re all going to write Aimee Chapman letters! Everyone loves to get letters! Everyone loves to open letters!” I was practically singing, I was so excitified. “We’ll write her letters to convincify her to play here. We’ll tell her how much we love her and how much we love the Ark. She can’t say no. Not to letters!” I cried.

  Millicent, Elizabeth, and Elliott agreed that it was a geniusal idea.

  It took a long time to come up with the exact right things to say, but finally we were all writing really fast and a lot. So much that Elizabeth needed more paper. Elliott drew a picture of the stage with Aimee Chapman singing on it, and Millicent wrote her letter as a story. My letter was very simple, and it went like this:

  Dear Mrs. Aimee (I do not know your middle name) Chapman,

  It is a scientific fact that you are everyone’s favorite musician. That is why you are the only one who can save the world in Chester, New York. Our grown-up friend Noah owns Noah’s Ark, which is a place where all the kids can go. Adults can come, too, of course. Without the Ark, some kids would go home and be all by themselves until their parents came home from work. When they go to Noah’s Ark, they have company! It’s also really good because they let you make art and music there.

  Howeve
r and nevertheless, if they don’t make enough money in just a couple weeks, they have to close down. FOREVER. The only way to save Noah’s Ark is to do something very amazingish and special. This is a for instance of why we want you to play a concert. Please, Mrs. Aimee (I do not know your middle name) Chapman, help us save the Ark.

  Your friend-to-be, Frannie B. Miller

  P.S. You can call me Frankly because that is my professional name. It even says so on my résumé (that’s a list of all the places I’ve worked).

  When we were done with our letters, we went to the office and presented them to Noah. He was very impresstified. Noah gave us all envelopes and we wrote Aimee’s manager’s address on them. He let us put the stamps on and said he would be sure to send them. I had a very good day feeling on my skin about this. But before we left, I got a little bit of a worry tickle in my brain.

  “Noah?” I asked him.

  “Hmmm . . . ?” he said, writing something down on a very official sheet of paper. It was so official, it had a name: letterhead. That’s where the paper says something on top. In this case, what it said on top was NOAH’S ARK. My letterhead was going to say MRS. FRANKLY B. MILLER, PROFESSIONAL WORKER.

  “What if Aimee Chapman says no?”

  That’s when Noah looked up. “Since the fund-raiser has to go on with or without her, I’ve asked three local bands to step in if she says no. We’ll do a battle of the bands,” he said.

  I liked the sound of that: battle of the bands. But I wanted Aimee Chapman.

  “That sounds good,” I told him, although really what sounded good was the name of it. Secretly I hoped that our letters would make her say yes! Elliott, Millicent, Elizabeth, and I left, ran down the stairs, waited for our parents, and then went home to wait some more.

  My mom put on an Aimee Chapman CD, while my dad and I helped her fix dinner. Sometimes we have dance parties, but not on purpose. This was one of those times. We are a very dancey kind of family. We danced all through making dinner, and then we danced our way to the table. It was very funnish. At dinner I told my parents about the letters we wrote, and they said they were a very good idea.