Chapter 5

KHN Incorporated

By Monday morning, we were ready. It had been a very productive weekend for all of us. The Three Musketeers arrived at school with bags of crafts and snacks we had made to sell on the playground. We could not wait until recess time. We had named our company "KHN Incorporated". It looked very official using our initials and an important grown up word.

We had a surprise at school though. It turned out that the news about Club G had been on the news that morning and now everyone at school knew about the store coming to Stamford. Every girl in Ms. Coleman's class was planning to go and was talking about how much money she had saved. Oh no! What if they were all so greedy about their own Club G trip that they did not want to spend their money on KHN Incorporated items to fund our trip to Club G? I could not stand for it if they were. Sometimes I really don't like the kids at school. They are greedy and selfish and think of themselves before they think of me; Karen Brewer.

There is a rumor going around that Ms. Coleman let me be in her wedding only because I threw a huge tantrum and my parents were worried that my teacher would get a restraining order against me just like Morbidda Destiny did so Daddy paid Ms. Coleman a lot of money to let me help. It is a lie of course. Ms. Coleman loves me a lot and would never accept money for the privilege of having the one and only Karen Brewer in her wedding. That rumor is the reason that some kids do not like me at school and are big meanie mos to me. I am glad Andrew does not go to my school because he said the same thing to me that the meanie mo kids said about the wedding. I do not know how he knew the rumor. When I beat him up for saying it, Mommy said Andrew was right and she did not understand how I could forget my tantrum over the wedding so easily.

At recess we set our business up on a table that Ms. Coleman generously offered to loan us. Hannie said she has been scared of me ever since the wedding and that is why she loaned us the table but Hannie is just super jelly of me and always has been.

We had a gigundo amount of things for sale. We had both snacks and crafts. We were selling snacks like homemade cookies, brownies, pretzels and cake. We had made crib mobiles, clay animals, paper plate masks, paper bag puppets, paintings, collages, pencil cans made out of soup cans and wrapping paper, ornaments and jewelry. I just knew that the Three Musketeers would be rich from the sale.

The snack sale was going very well especially the cookies. Ricky bought five of them and I know it is because he is in luv with me. Hannie said it is because he is a fat pig who will eat anything but I ignored her. I started to notice something not so good about the sale. For one thing the crafts really were not selling which was easy enough to blame on Nancy and Hannie's lack of artistic talent which was dragging my brilliance down. However, the thing that really worried me was that only boys were buying anything. I did not understand why none of our other friends were buying anything.

After recess I decided to confront Natalie Springer and Sara Ford in the bathroom about them not buying stuff. "Hi why did you not buy anything from us? I do not think it was very friendly of you to not want to support Hannie, Nancy and I going to the grand opening of Club G."

Natalie and Sara looked at each other nervously without saying anything but finally Natalie spoke up. "Well Karen, you see all of us girls are saving our money for Club G."

"Yeah you are not the only ones who want to go there." Sara chimed in.

I really wanted to slap them both. I tried to restrain myself but finally I gave in to my urges and tackled Natalie. "You big fat meanie mo!"

Natalie had begun to cry, "You let me go please Karen."

I began punching her and ignored Sara trying to pull me off. "I will not stop until you spend all that you have on my sale."

Sara ran out and returned in a minute with Ms. Coleman who yanked me off of Natalie and sat me a chair next to her in the classroom. She made me sit there until it was time to go home. Boo and bullfrogs to Ms. Coleman. She is a meanie mo.

After school, the Three Musketeers had big plans for more money making ideas so I was eager to get out of there. Nancy was coming to the big house neighborhood and we were going to have a lemonade stand in front of my house plus a yard sale. We would sell all the extra snacks and craft stuff and we had found old stuff from our houses to sell.

"Come to KHN's gigundo super sale!" I shrieked from the top of a lawn chair. "It is the best sale on earth!"

"It is a junk sale," Andrew piped up. He was sitting on the grass playing with toy cars. "No one is going to buy your garbage."

I threatened Andrew with a shake of the fist and what I like to call my tiger growl. He ran scared to the backyard dropping one of his cars behind him. I picked up the car and slapped a price tag on it. Andrew really should do his part to fund my trip to Club G even if it is just a toy car. He is such a spoiled brat anyway and has way more cars than he needs.

We did not have as many customers as we were hoping but a lot of our families and the neighborhood grown ups felt sorry for us and bought things. At the end of the day we had not sold everything but we had sold a lot.

The three of us sat down before dinner and counted our totals for the day. Divided three ways, we each got five dollars and ninety seven cents. It was not a lot but maybe we could sell more things before the Club G opening. I could hardly wait. We only had five more days to wait because Club G was this Saturday. It meant we would all get our allowances before then too so that was a little more money. And maybe just maybe our parents would buy us each a present at Club G. Dreams of Club G filled our heads. It was going to be the best day ever.