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I've heard chicken pox are SUPER contagious, and whenever a kid gets them, they're not allowed to come back to school for a week. But I couldn't afford to have Rowley out of commission for even one NIGHT. He was my ride to the dance, and I knew that if his mom and dad didn't let him go, then I couldn't go, either. I told Rowley he had the chicken pox, but I probably should have broken the news to him slowly instead of all at once. Rowley was gonna go straight downstairs and tell his parents, but I told him to calm down and we'd figure this out together. I said if he could just get through the night without telling anyone, I'd owe him for the rest of my life. All he needed to do was cover up his chicken pox and not

make a big stink to his parents. We'd both go to the dance and have a great time, and now one would even have to know. But Rowley was too freaked out to think straight, and I had to give him two coconut chocolates to quiet him down. Now that Rowley knew he had the chicken pox, he was going CRAZY with the itching. So I got some socks out of his dresser and put them on his hands. I figured Rowley's mom and dad probably knew what chicken pox looked like and we had to find a way to cover them up. So we went into his parents bathroom and looked through his Mom's makeup kit to see if there was anything we could use. I found some stuff called "concealer", and that sounded about right to

me. I used a little brush I found in a draw and then tried to cover up the problem areas of Rowley's face. But you could totally tell that Rowley was wearing makeup. So I grabbed a silk scarf from the top of Mrs. Jefferson's dresser and told Rowley to put it on and cover up around his mouth. Then I noticed he had a few chicken pox on his forehead, so I found a big hat in his mom's closet and had him put that on, too. I'm not gonna say Rowley looked totally normal, but at least you couldn't tell he had the chicken pox. I kind of held my breath when we got into the car, but I think Mr. Jefferson just thought Rowley's

getup was some kind of middle school fashion thing, and he didn't say a word. When I opened the back door to get in, I was pretty surprised to find Rowley's old booster seat taking up one of the spots. I asked Rowley why he still had a booster seat in his dad's car, and he said they just never took it out once he got big enough for the regular seat. But come to think of it, I've always thought Rowley seemed a little too tall whenever he drove by with his family.

I knew we had to take that thing out before we went to pick up Abigail, because a limo company would never have a booster seat in one of its cars. But you need it to be some kind of an engineer to figure out how to undo the clasp on that thing. By that point we were already late picking up Abigail, so we had to just leave it. When we pulled into Abigail's driveway, I asked Mr. Jefferson to honk the horn to let her know we with there. But Mr. Jefferson wouldn't honk the horn, because he said that's no way to treat a "lady." He said one of

ours was gonna have to go to her front door and escort her. Rowley started to get out, but I realized this was my big chance to make a good first impression on Abigail. So I walked up to the house and knocked on the door. But Abigail didn't come to the front door-her DAD did. Apparently, Mr. Brown is a state trooper, or he just likes dressing up like one. Mr. Brown said Abigail was upstairs getting ready