Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar by James Patterson Page A

the garage while Rhonda handed out orangeade and acted as the goodwill ambassador for the band. “YOU WON’T BELIEVE HOW AMAZING THEY ARE!” she told Mrs. Bloomgarden.
    “She’s right—you won’t believe it,” Rafe agreed.
    I strummed a chord. “One-two-three-four!” I shouted, and the band burst into our first song. I have to say that we were getting better. I didn’t even get my fingers caught in anything. When we finished the song, there was silence.
    Until Rafe hopped up onto a table to do his own performance.

    The sad part was that Mrs. Bloomgarden actually applauded—for Rafe, not us.
    That was all the encouragement he needed to keep going. We Stink was going to have to work hard to drown out my brother.
    “Crank it up,” I told my friends. So we did.

The Aftermath
    W e Stink finished our fifth and final song, and the crowd went wild. And by
wild
, I mean that Mr. Stanley finally took off the earmuffs he had been trying on for the past four songs, and Mrs. Bloomgarden managed to coax Wilson out of the file cabinet, where he had been hiding. She sniffed at me as she carried Wilson away, cooing to him, “Don’t worry, poopsie! The big scary noise is all over now.”
    But at least a couple of people were clapping. “WE STINK RULES!” Rhonda screeched.
    Sam stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a deafening whistle. Yes, that’s right—Sam Marksshowed up at my garage sale. I guess Rhonda must have told him about it.

    I managed to smile at Sam, but I was feeling kind of seasick. After all, here I was, playing lousy guitar at a garage sale. So humiliating.
    Clap. Clap. Clap.
The sound of sarcastic applause. I looked around to find out who could be that rude, but I should have been able to guess.
    Missy Trillin, standing by a stack of sweaters.
Gah! What’s
she
doing here?
My stomach shriveled in fear.
    “Wow, I really liked your performance, Georgia,” Missy said with a sneer. “I really liked when it
stopped
.”
    “Who’s that?” Nanci asked as she snuck another cookie from the table.
    “Nobody,” I told her.
Please go away
, I begged silently. But Missy didn’t move, except to pick up my old Christmas sweater between her thumb and index finger and grimace at the reindeer on it.
    “She seems to think she’s somebody.” Mari frowned and folded her arms across her chest as she watched Missy pick over my family’s castoff items. I cringed. Missy was acting like shewas searching through a Dumpster in a sketchy neighborhood. All of a sudden, my old, well-loved games, books, and clothes looked like embarrassing trash to me. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Missy left and came back wearing a diamond-covered hazmat suit to look through everything else.
    Don’t look at her
, I told myself. Fighting the blush I felt creeping up my neck, I turned to my friends. “Patti, Mari, and Nanci, this is Sam,” I said.
    My bandmates said hi, and Sam said, “You guys were great.”
    But Missy couldn’t just disappear, of course. She gasped. “Don’t tell me you’re selling this!” She mockingly held up an old, half-bald troll doll. “And
only
fifty cents?”

    I wondered if there was room for me to hide in the file cabinet, now that Wilson had moved on.
    “Why is Missy even here?” Sam wanted to know.
    “To torture me,” I explained.
    Rhonda turned herback on Missy. “ANYONE WANT ORANGEADE?” My bandmates said yes.
    “Rhonda’s got a lot of… energy,” Sam said as we watched her pass around the plate of cookies. She let Nanci take only two.
    I wasn’t sure what Sam meant by that, so I just said, “She can’t help herself.” I glanced around the tables, where the items were thinning out. A lot of our stuff had already sold. Grandma Dotty was demonstrating how an exercise bike could also be used as a coatrack. Rafe was trying to convince an older couple that they needed an extra toilet.
    “What’s up?” Sam asked as I bit my lip. “You look worried.”
    “It’s just—well,