Written by Dawn Dalton
Illustrated by James Grasdal
No matter how hard Karma tried, she couldn’t help being bad.
Her parents liked to joke that the pranks started when Karma was still in her mother’s belly – but now that she’d entered middle school, they’d stopped laughing at all her jokes.
“Bad, Karma,” tsked her mother when she unscrewed the salt lid minutes before the neighbor poured it on Mom’s chicken-pot pie.
“Bad, Karma,” said Dad when she covered his face in make-up after he fell asleep on the couch watching football. Karma didn’t know what the big deal was, she’d only posted one picture to her blog, Bad Karma.
Even her younger sister called her bad after finding her new underwear stuffed in the freezer next to a liter of Rolo ice cream. Karma wasn’t allowed to have any after that – come to think of it, that was bad.
Karma worked really hard not to be bad, but at the beginning of every week, her mother would sit on the edge of Karma’s bed, hands clasped on her lap and sigh. “Maybe this week,” she’d say. “Maybe this week you could try for a little good, Karma.”
