My Room For Rent

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Three teams come to the Tampa area for Spring Training: the Toronto Blue Jays, the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies. I chose the New York Yankees for this story by using the oh-so-scientific method of eenie meenie miney mo. I don’t follow baseball and I couldn’t name a player on the Yankees team to save my life. So if, by chance, they have a second baseman now, in the past or in the future who is named Wayne, it’s purely coincidental.

Text Copyright © 2015 by Karleen Tauszik

Cover Photographs:

—Boy: IStockPhoto.com, 23556765

—House: BigStockPhoto.com 780593

—Grass: BigStockPhoto.com 2272389

Cover designed by Karleen Tauszik

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Visit the author on the web at www.KarleenT.com.

Summary: Everything changes for Justin the day he comes home from sixth grade and finds that his mother moved out to chase after a new life.

ISBN 978-0-9904899-0-0

TO PARENTS: Visit author Karleen Tauszik on the web at KarleenT.com, where you can sign up to get her FREE book:

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Parent-Proven Tips to

Make Reading Exciting and Fun

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Engage and Encourage Your Reluctant Reader.

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You’ll also get her newsletter with more tips, the latest news in the world of reading for children, and her latest releases and promos. My goal is to get your child to LOVE reading. Is that your goal too? If so, click the cover.

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With sincere thanks to my team of

5th and 6th grade beta readers:

Maggie Campbell

Sadie Campbell

Jake Charboneau

David Harcombe

Kayla Polanco

Stephen Rogers

Your assistance and comments

were both insightful and valuable.

Prologue

Hi. I’m Justin King. This story is about me, and here’s a heads up: it’s about a time when my life turned upside down.

Prologue is a fancy word for stuff you need to know before you read the story. And you need to know that my upside down time is over. I survived, even though we didn’t get the happily-ever-after ending my dad was hoping for. But I’ll be OK. My life took some twists and turns, but I guess that happens to a lot of people. Maybe it has happened to you.

Most people think my story is sad. But it has some happy parts, I promise. In the end, I learned a lot—about trust, about love, and about life. And my life went from upside down to kind of right side up. Not the way it used to be, but I guess you could call it a new normal. You’ll see.

Chapter 1

I’m not usually the type who cheers when another guy is down. But when Mrs. Blake announced to the class that Ethan Lawson broke his arm over the weekend, I knew what that meant before she said it.

That means he won’t be able to play the piano and accompany Abby Dylan on her solo for our 6th grade year-end show. Her forehead creased into a deep V shape.

I crossed my fingers under my desk and held my breath, watching our teacher tap her pencil on her clipboard while she scanned our class roster.

Finally, she looked up. Justin King?

I straightened up in my seat, crossing my fingers even tighter.

You can play the piano, right? Do you still take lessons?

I nodded. Yes, I do. Every week. I could hear some of the guys behind me snickering.

Would you be willing to take Ethan’s place?

Would I be willing? Yessss! This is a dream come true!

Trying hard to keep from breaking out into a grin, I shrugged and said, Yeah, I guess.

Mrs. Blake smiled, walked to my desk and handed me the piano music. Great. That’s settled. Thanks for your cooperation.

No, thank YOU, Mrs. Blake, for the chance to spend one-on-one time with the wonderful Abby Dylan!

I looked at the papers in my hand and read the heading, You’ve Got a Friend in Me from Walt Disney’s Toy Story.

Scanning the four pages, I knew that with some practice I’d be able to play it without any problems. I thought the song seemed a little babyish for sixth graders, but whatever. At last, all those dumb piano lessons were going to pay off. Mom always said they would.

I glanced over at Abby and she smiled at me. Yes, Abby Dylan actually smiled at me. Today now held the world’s record for the best day ever. Was it just a polite smile? Or a looking forward to spending time with you smile? Stop analyzing, dude. Take the smile! I tried sending a casual nod her way. You know, calm and cool. But inside I did a totally dorky happy dance.

Finally, the bell rang. I worked my way through the tangle of kids heading for the door, keeping my eye on Abby. Fortunately for me, she seemed to be taking her time getting everything into her backpack. I took a deep breath before I finally reached her desk.

Hey, I said.

She glanced up, flicking her long auburn hair over her shoulder.

Her deep brown eyes caught me by surprise. It took all my strength to focus on keeping my voice steady and casual. So how about if I have my mom call your mom about you coming over to get in some practice? We have a piano at our house.

Uh, yeah, that would be great. She nodded and smiled. Sure, any day but Tuesday.

I nodded back, trying hard to act like this happened every day.

Great. I’ll work it out. Turning, I waved and headed for the door.

Out in the hall, the usual after-school chaos reigned. Locker doors slammed, adding to the noise of everyone shouting to their friends. I made my way through to my locker, where Daniel stood waiting and smirking.

Way to get together with the most popular girl in our grade! He gave me a playful punch on the shoulder.

I tried to keep from blushing, focusing on my lock combination, but the warmth rising up in my cheeks told me my efforts weren’t working. We’ll just be practicing. No big deal, you know?

Yeah, right. He laughed. No big deal.

I leaned down to pull a book from my backpack and I shoved it into the locker. Pretending to dig around looking for a folder, I muttered, I invited her over to practice.

Oooo, you are smooth, my friend. Did she say yes?

Yeah, if my mom works it out with her mom. I pulled out my math book and shut the door. We’ll see what happens.

Trying to change the subject, I said, Hey, we better move along or we’ll miss the bus.

But Daniel saw right through it. He laughed and said, Yeah, right, bro. We haven’t missed the bus all year. You just be sure to keep me posted on this romance, you hear?

I rolled my eyes at him and said, Whatever. Let’s go.

When we got outside to the bus circle and stood in the line, Daniel said, Hey, registration closes this weekend for soccer camp. I just need to do one more job and I’ll have the money.

Great! Ever since I went last summer, Daniel had been saving up so he could go with me. His parents agreed to pay half of the cost if he could raise the other half.

Your mom already registered you, right? he asked.

Yeah, I’m sure. I gave Daniel a thumbs up. She does every summer. She’s pretty organized with stuff like that.

Talking over his shoulder while he climbed the bus steps ahead of me, he said, I can’t wait. It’s going to be such a great time, my friend. The best!

He talked about our camp plans until my bus stop, the second one on our route. But no matter how much he jabbered about it, he couldn’t pull my mind away from being excited about performing with Abby.

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The bus dropped me off at the gate to our community. I waved to the security guard in his booth and strode through the narrow side walkway. After a long day at school, I never looked forward to walking in the hot Florida sun all the way to our house, the fifth one down the street. The distance doesn’t sound like much, but these houses all had sprawling lawns and four-car garages. The kids at school called my neighborhood McMansion-ville. But today I felt like I was walking on air, and the distance and heat didn’t get me down.

Turning into the driveway, I jogged toward the front door. I bounced up the brick steps, taking them two at a time and opened the heavy oak door.

That’s where I froze.

The piano was gone.

Chapter 2

I noticed it right away. The formal front living room looked empty. The only trace left of the piano were the round indents in the carpet from its thick sturdy legs.

Have we been robbed? Should I go in?

Carolina? Every day our maid bustled out of the kitchen with a glass of ice