Eternal Spring A Young Adult Short Story Collection Read Online Free PDF

has a long
way to go.”
    “He'll probably get to live on milkshakes.”
    “Probably.”
    My stomach reminded me that I'd only eaten one hot dog at
dinner.
    Ian sighed. “I could go for a milkshake.”
    “I wish.”
    “Hang on.” He moved the quilt and stood up.
    Sitting up, I crossed my legs to make more room on the sofa.
“Are we breaking in to the kitchen?”
    He laughed. “No.”
    I watched him walk over to the bookcase by the desk. He
moved a few books and pulled out two vanilla pudding cups.
    “No way!”
    He reached again and came up with two spoons.
    “You are my hero!” I said.
    “I stashed them in here the other day.” He handed me a spoon
and a pudding and sat back down.
    I peeled the foil off the top. “This is so much better than
the granola bar hidden under my mattress.”
    I started to dip my spoon in, but Ian held up his pudding
cup as if to make a toast.
    “To us,” he said, and then he bumped his cup against mine.
“We make a good team.”
    We were a team? I so wanted us to be a team.
    I couldn't think of anything to say, so I just sat there,
holding my pudding and smiling at him.
    Did he actually like me? Boys had liked me before, but never
the ones that I liked. Their declarations of love always resulted in awkward
and messy attempts to avoid hurting their feelings.
    Ian was not the kind of guy I'd push away. I'd never seen
eyes like his, like flecks of honey in warm chocolate sauce. I wanted to move
closer, to really see them, but I couldn't without making it obvious that I had
a thing for him.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the front door open. I
wanted to scream, “Go away!”
    The cuter Greg came in. He gave us an inquisitive look.
    “Hey, Greg,” I said and scooped some pudding into my mouth.
    “Hey, man,” Ian said.
    “Do I really get to talk to two people my own age? The
non-stop babysitting is overwhelming.”
    “I hear you,” Ian agreed.
    Walking over to us, Greg said, “Are you kidding me? Where
did you get pudding?”
    With a sigh, Ian stood up. “I guess we'll have to buy your
silence.” Then he went to give Greg one his puddings.
    I took another bite and pretended Greg wasn't interrupting.
Before long, my alarm beeped. “Gotta go,” I said, hoping Ian would decide to
walk with me.
    “G'night, Emma,” Ian said.
    “See you at breakfast,” Greg said.

 
 
    Friday, our cabin was in the middle of our morning chaos
when a frantic child from the other boy's cabin knocked on the door. “Mrs. L
says for Emma to come to cabin four right away.”
    He ran off before I could ask any questions.
    I slipped into my sneakers, yelled to Sophie, and ran after
him.
    When I got to cabin four, I saw a boy lying on the bed,
struggling to breathe. He was turning a little blue, but that clearly wasn't
his punishment. His punishment was the giant pair of kangaroo feet that poked
out from under the quilt. Mrs. L and the two Gregs were busy examining every
inch of him.
    “What's wrong?” I asked when I found Ian.
    “We don't know.”
    The boy's face was all rashy, and I looked at his hands.
They were too.
    Ian said, “All we know is that he made candy out of some
leaves.”
    “Emma, see what the children know. Ian, check the bathroom
for any traces of the potion he used.”
    I rushed outside to see what the boys had seen. Trying not
to scare them, I said, “Do you know what he ate?”
    “Candy.”
    “What kind?”
    They shrugged.
    “Did he give some to anybody else?”
    “No,” a kid with glasses said.
    “He tried to give me a piece,” one boy answered. “I didn't
eat it.”
    I nodded. “Because it is against the rules?”
    He shook his head. “No, because it looked like poison ivy.”
    The rash on his hands and face! “You saw the leaves?”
    “No, but the candy had three leaves, and I was afraid he
used poison ivy.”
    I turned and ran back into the cabin. “Poison ivy! He made
the candy from poison ivy.”
    “Of course,” the director said, relief evident