Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus Read Online Free PDF

only found ninety cents. And a dirty sock. And a receipt from Taco Bell. But I also found something that made me sad: a toy mouse. I wasn’t sure which cat it had belonged to, but since Muffin and Fluff were buried in my backyard, I decided to believe it was Checkers’s toy mouse. I also decided to go outside and try to find Checkers again. Because when itcame to finding her, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with being hopeful .
    My mother didn’t even notice me leaving. I went outside in my coat and walked around to the backyard. I didn’t call out to Checkers, because even when I owned her, she’d never come to me when I did that. I tried to sneak up on places where I thought she might hide. Like bushes. And snowdrifts. And Mr. Lively’s woodpile. I figured that after living on her own for this long, she had probably become a very wild cat. Because Checkers had to make it on her own out here. And this was a wild place. There was a lot of dangerous stuff like cars. And raccoons. And spiders. And blizzards. And rusty nails. Also, there was no cat food.
    “What are you looking for, Camille?”
    I couldn’t believe it. It was Polly. And she was wearing really cute jeans and a puffy green coat and pretty pink boots and standing right on my property.
    “Nothing,” I said.
    Because what I was doing was none of her business. And if I’d told her the truth, that I was looking for my cat, she might have thought that I was too poor to afford a new cat. And that was not the problem. The problem was that sometimes I was an unlucky mammal who happened to own other unlucky mammals as pets.
    “Are you feeling okay?” Polly asked.
    “Of course,” I said.
    “That’s good. It was very slippery out yesterday,” Polly said.
    I didn’t say anything. I thought it was pretty rude to bring that up. Because I hadn’t been thinking about falling underneath my school bus in front of all those laughers. I’d been thinking about something important. My poor cat Checkers.
    “Do you want to build a snow fort?” Polly asked.
    I did not say anything. I walked away. Because I was not in the mood to deal with Polly Clausen. If I was really going to be a dingo, I needed to learn how to walk away from a lot of people. And, if I came across them, other dingoes. I marched right over to a back corner of my yard and sat down and began admiring myself. Polly watched me for a little bit, but then she turned around and walked across Mr. Lively’s yard back to her own property. Which was the right thing to do. Because coming over to my house wearing her cute jeans and puffy green coat and pretty pink boots and asking me to build a snow fort with her was the sort of thing that would wreck my dingo strategy.
    Because dingoes didn’t care about people or fashion. Dingoes went around naked. And dingoes didn’t build snow forts, either. It was like Polly didn’t even know what a dingo was or something. So I sat there in the corner until my butt got cold. Then I went inside to pack my cooler so I could help out Mrs. Bratberg.
    Flat on her back in the living room, my mother stared up at the purple ceiling.
    “Isn’t it fabulous?” she asked.
    “It is very noticeable,” I said.
    “Yeah. It really pops,” she said.
    And I thought that was a good word to use, because I knew that my dad’s head was going to pop right off when he got back from Seattle and saw our purple house.
    “I’m going to be a mother’s helper for the Bratbergs,” I said.
    “Good luck,” my mother said. “And let’s not tell your father.”
    “I know,” I said.
    “Do you have your cooler?” she asked.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “And don’t let them put their turtle in the refrigerator this time. That’s cruel,” my mother said.
    “I know. I won’t.”
    Last time, they’d stuck that fellow in the crisper drawer to play a trick on me. I went in there looking for carrots. It was not a pleasant surprise.
    “Camille,” she said. Her voice sounded goofy.