Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Practicing the Piano (But She Does Love Being in Recitals) by Peggy Gifford Page A

a tippy canoe, though she hadn’t meant to. And sometimes she ate a flower instead of a salad for supper.
    People always said that Moxy must have inherited her fearlessness from Aunt Susan Standish.

chapter 14
In Which There Is
a Diagnosis
    “Is this how a coma looks?” whispered Pansy. Pansy was leaning over Aunt Susan Standish’s face.
    “No,” whispered Moxy, “this is how unconscious looks.”
    “It is not, Moxy,” said Mark. “She’s just asleep.”
    “Is she awake?” Granny George shouted from the door.
    “Not yet,” said Aunt Susan Standish without so much as removing her mask or moving any body parts. “She’ll be awake in twenty minutes.”
    Then it was silent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .for that long. Then Pansy said, “Aunt Susan Standish can talk in a coma.” Then everyone got so busy telling everyone else to be quiet that no one noticed Mrs. Maxwell standing in the doorway.

chapter 15
Mrs. Maxwell
Standing in
the Doorway
    Moxy hadn’t
seen her mother since she got back from Africa. And all week Moxy had worried that her mother might accidentally run into a lion. Or that a herd of buffalo might accidentally run into her. Moxy’s mother wasn’t fearless like Moxy and Aunt Susan Standish.
    Moxy could hardly wait to show her mother the Surprise Outfits she and Granny George had been working on all week to wear to the recital tonight. But when Moxy saw her mother standing in the doorway wearing a sweatshirt with a big orange sunthat said SMILE, YOU’RE IN MIAMI on it, she was a little startled by how tired her mother looked.
    Here is a photograph Mark Maxwell took of Mrs. Maxwell’s sweatshirt. It said SMILE, YOU’RE IN MIAMI .

    “Mom, are you okay?” whispered Moxy. Actually, her whisper was so loud, it was a borderline “regular voice.”
    But Mrs. Maxwell was not okay. She was worried about her sister. She wanted to make sure no one woke her. So she did something only an experienced mother can do. She got everyone out of the room without saying a word. This is how she did it: She mouthed the word “OUT” while slicing her arms back and forth the way an umpire might.
    It was very effective. Except for Mrs. Maxwell and Aunt Susan Standish, the room was evacuated in fewer than eighteen seconds.
    As soon as Moxy and Pansy and Mark were gone, Mrs. Maxwell forgot all about finding out whether Moxy could stop playing her part of “Heart and Soul” tonight.She also forgot about the note from Ms. Killingher. She also forgot about Ms. Killingher waiting on the phone.
    Mrs. Maxwell went over to the bed to check on her sleeping sister.

chapter 16
Everything You
Need to Know
About the Green
Grass
Power Shake
    Meanwhile, Moxy wandered downstairs. It was her plan to make a quite large glass of the Green Grass Power Shake. You may recall that drinking the Green Grass Power Shake was number three on Moxy’s List of Nine Things to Do Before Tonight. The Green Grass Power Shake would give her the upper-body strength she needed to play “Heart and Soul.”
    The Green Grass Power Shake was very powerful: It had 1,433 combined vitamins and minerals—approximately 1,405 more than the
average
power shake. There was very little it couldn’t do.

chapter 17
In Which Moxy
Is Helpful
    The first thing Moxy noticed when she got downstairs was the phone cord. It was stretched like a clothesline across the kitchen floor and into the hall. Then she noticed that the phone was off the hook. So she hung it up.
    The next thing Moxy did was step over the phone and into a big glob of marshmallow frosting. At first she thought it was gum. But as she walked on, she realized it had a
generally
sticky texture and not a
specifically
sticky texture, like normal gum.
    It wasn’t until she saw the 150 cupcakescooling on all the counters that she realized she was walking on marshmallow frosting.
    Here is a photograph that Mark, who was already in the kitchen, took of the 150 cupcakes