Not even the cat. Beezus gets all the atten-

tion around here. Even Picky-picky likes

Beezus more than he likes me!” She was

pleased that her father stayed in the living room and she didn’t lose any of her audi-ence. “You’ll be sorry someday when I’m

rich and famous.”

“I didn’t know you were planning to be

rich and famous,” said Mr. Quimby.

Neither had Ramona until that moment.

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“What do you mean, I get all the attention around here?” demanded Beezus. “Nobody

tapes my schoolwork to the refrigerator door.

We can hardly find the refrigerator, it is so buried under all your drawings and junk!”

Both parents looked at Beezus in sur-

prise. “Why, Beezus,” said Mrs. Quimby, “I

had no idea you minded.”

“Well, I do,” said Beezus crossly. “And

Ramona always gets out of things like wash-

ing dishes because she is too little. She’ll probably still be too little when she’s eighty.”

“See?” said Ramona. “Beezus doesn’t like

me because my artwork is stuck to the

refrigerator.” Her parents weren’t supposed to feel sorry for Beezus. They were supposed

to feel sorry for Ramona.

“I’m always in the way,” said Ramona.

“You have to park me with Howie’s grand-

mother so you can go to work, and Howie’s

grandmother doesn’t like me. She thinks

175

I’m so terrible she probably won’t want me around anymore, and then there won’t be

anybody to look after me and you can’t go

to work. So there!” Ramona flopped down

on the couch, waiting for someone to tell her she was wrong.

Ramona’s mother and father said noth-

ing.

“Everybody picks on me all the time,”

said Ramona. Maybe she really would be so

bad Mrs. Kemp would say, I simply cannot

put up with Ramona another day.

Silence.

Ramona made up her mind to shock her

parents, really shock them. “I am going to

run away,” she announced.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Mr. Quimby

as if running away were a perfectly natural

thing to do.

“When are you leaving?” inquired

Ramona’s mother politely. The question

176

was almost more than Ramona could bear.

Her mother was supposed to say, Oh,

Ramona, please, please don’t leave me!

“Today,” Ramona managed to say with

quivering lips. “This morning.”

“She just wants you to feel sorry for her,”

said heartless Beezus.“She wants you to stop her.”

Ramona waited for her mother or father

to say something, but neither spoke. Finally there was nothing for Ramona to do but

get up from the couch.“I guess I’ll go pack,”

she said, and started slowly toward her

room.

No one tried to prevent her. When she

reached her room, tears began to fall. She

got out her Q-tip box with all her money,

forty-three cents, in it. Still no one came to beg her not to leave. She looked around for