Dear Hello Kitty Diary,

Since this is the first time I’m writing in here because I just got this secret diary book for a Christmas present and mommy and me have been real busy., I think maybe I should introduce myself like a polite young lady. Mommy always tells me to be a polite little lady.

My name is Valerie Brookmeyer … um … Pullo. I’m eleven- years-old and really, really scared.

I love my mommy. She gets mad sometimes and especially lately hasn’t had so many patience with me. I try to be good because I know all about her headaches, even though she doesn’t think I do. She takes medicine she calls aspirin but I know the aspirin bottle has B-A-Y-E-R written in yellow on it and her pills come out of a brown bottle with little typed words and her name on it.

Like I said, I’m really scared but not like I usually get scared. Not scared like when I forget my homework or when Timmy’s dog, Whitey, chases me down the road. Not scared like when I have bad dreams about those flying monkeys in the old Wizard of Oz movie. It’s a different kind of scared that makes my stomach hurt sometimes.

It got real bad that day before Thanksgiving when I came home from school and mommy fell down the steps. She woke up when I pushed her arm but the next day she told me she wanted to stop working at her real estate job just to stay home with me. She said it would be fun but I was afraid it was something bad. Then she decided to take one more client before she quit and that was the first time I saw my mommy smile in a really long time. I thought maybe I wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore. She talked about Mr. Pullo a lot. About how he wanted to buy that run down old vineyard on the hill. About what he looked like and the color of his eyes and even how his voice sounded. She even laughed sometimes when she talked about him. (This is a secret, Hello Kitty Diary, but my mommy talked about Mr. Pullo the same way I talk about Timmy!)

I was really excited the day she took me with her to meet him at the vineyard, but she parked so far away I could hardly see him then walked all that way in the snow to talk. I was glad when the car stopped running. Well, not really glad because I was freezing. But after that, I got to meet Mr. Pullo because he drove us home. He was so nice to us and nice to mommy and I liked him too. I think I even believed that maybe there wouldn’t be any reasons to be scared anymore.

I was happy mommy married him, even though I heard my arithmetic teacher, Mrs. Marlis tell Principal Smyth that she thought it was too fast to get married. I think, why wait? Mommy loves him and he loves my mommy … and he even says he loves me.

He went away for a whole day when the big storm came and mommy cried. I told her he’d come home as soon as the snow was plowed from the streets but for a long time she just cried and cried. He’s back now and this morning I almost wish I could’ve stayed home to be with them. It looked like they were going to have fun. Daddy (I like calling him daddy) made a fire in the fireplace and I know they were going to roast marshmallows without me. They were all twinkling when I left for the school bus.

But today on the bus coming home, I got real scared again. My stomach hurt so bad and Timmy helped me open the window so I could have some fresh cold air. Then I heard a whisper in my ear. It wasn’t Timmy or anything. It was my guardian angel and she told me everything is going to be okay. But really, it isn’t I think.

See, right after school they said they wanted talk to me like a grown up. That’s always bad, you know. And daddy said all the hard stuff while mommy tried to look like she wasn’t crying. I didn’t say anything. I just went to my room to do my homework and say my prayers.

Daddy came to my room to tuck me in. He said he wanted to learn to do it the right way and that made me start to cry. But when he was so nice, telling me he was going to take good care of me and wouldn’t let anything happen to me, I just shook my head. I told him what I know … and I think I hurt his feelings because he had to wipe tears out of his eyes too. I didn’t know big men and daddies could cry too and I made sure he knew I was sorry for saying it. But he told me he was comforted. I have to look in the dictionary at school tomorrow because I think feeling comforted is a good thing. I hope so.

Hello Kitty Diary, can I tell you what I told my new daddy?

I told him something I think I knew since mommy first talked about him. I told him that I felt like my mommy was leaving, but I wasn’t sure about it until he came to us because he was now going to be my daddy. I told him we could learn how to tuck each other in bed at night because we are both going to miss my mommy.