Gingerbread Read Online Free PDF Page B

of mumbling, you'd get to know him, too. Kids are like dogs, Nancy. They know who their friends are."
    "But..." Nancy groaned.
    "Enough!" Sid said. This Cyd silently thanked him and went upstairs to her room. Wowsa, he had really stood up for Shrimp. I know for a fact that Sid shudders in horror every time he witnesses Shrimp's spiked platinum hair and sharktooth necklace. Probably Sid Just wanted to be contrary to Nancy. That's how they get along.
    When I got to my room, I flopped on my puke princess bed. A voice called out "Ouch!" I rolled over onto my stomach and skooched to the end of the bed to see what creature lay underneath.
    "That bounce hit my head!" my nine-year-old brother said.
    "So maybe some little pest shouldn't hide under there," I said.
    Josh crawled out from underneath my bed and did this bizarre lickety-split marathon run around my room, banging his fist into each corner as he passed it, like he was marking territory. This is not a boy who worries about my parents catching him awake after bedtime.
    "Come here, Hyper Boy," I said. I turned down my bed
    34
    35
    sheets to make room for him. He did a divebomb into my bed as I pulled the next Narnia book out from my night-stand.
    "Do the voices! Do the voices!" he cried out. He is a sucker for my Asian.
    "Okay," I said, "but you have to be quiet."
    Josh smacked his hands over his lips, producing loud blubbering noises. I closed the book and started to put it away.
    "Okay okay okay okay okay okay okay," Josh rush-whispered. "I'll be extra super-duper quiet." He banged his head against my shoulder a few times before nestling it inside my hip. I flicked his head just for fun and then started to read.
    I am the only person for whom he will be quiet and calm at night. He drives Leila nuts and I think he is responsible for all the new gray hairs on Nancy's head that she has to have colored out, despite Nancy's claim that I am the root of her gray hair woes.
    "I like it when you put me to bed, Cyd Charisse," Josh whispered. I knew it took superhuman willpower for him not to shout. "I like it better when you are here instead of away at school."
    "Well, don't get too used to me," I said. "I haven't decided for sure that I am staying."
    36
    Ten
    I am thinking of moving my commune to Siberia. We will invite Wallace and his new girlfriend, Delia. She is from Alaska and probably knows everything about wild cold wilderness situations. Wallace and Delia could figure out how to make iced coffee igloos for us to live in. We'll call them "coffeegloos." Everybody might have a hard time sleeping because the coffeegloos' walls give off a caffeine-laced aura, so we could tell ghost stories. We'd listen to the wind whir and the coyotes howl and wear those cool fur hats with the flaps on the ears. Probably Wallace and Shrimp will have to learn to ice fish even though they're vegetarians. Survival is key. They will sit at the hole in the ice for hours and hours, not talking but most likely communicating telepathically. Delia and I will dance around the coffeegloos while they are gone and listen to our voices echo at the crests of the plains. I'm fairly sure no one else I know will want to visit my commune in Siberia, but that will give us a chance to get to know the natives better. They will teach us how to make borscht and tell us about the olden days, when Siberia housed Stalin's prison camps. We won't be scared.
    37
    Eleven
    I have figured out a brilliant plan to drive Nancy crazy. I have a summer job at Java the Hut. Nancy can't say anything about it because Sid thinks young people should have jobs, like he did when he was a kid and had to walk five miles to school in the snow every morning before he became a self-made gazillionaire. Sid thinks having a summer job will "straighten the little hellion out," even if it is working with that boy .
    Plus now I can thank Shrimp and Sugar not to call Cyd Charisse "spoiled" any more, thankyouverymuch.
    I guess I am lucky because I don't need