Moving Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

measuring.
    That’s how much I hated our new house.
    The house had a pretty big backyard, but there was no swing set or anything to play on back there. Just trees and yard. And there were no geodes that I could find and use to start a new rock collection after my current one got thrown out. There was nothing in our new yard but some bald patches where there used to be grass.
    But there was one tree that had branches low enough that you could climb them. So Mark and Kevin started climbing.
    “Come on, Allie,” Mark called to me from the lower branches (which were sagging beneath his weight). “Climb with us.”
    “You’re so dumb,” I said to him, in a spurt of disbelief over his insensitivity. “Can’t you see what’s happening?”
    “No,” he said. “Except that you’re in a bad mood.”
    “Mom and Dad are making a huge mistake buying this new house,” I informed him.
    “I like the new house,” Kevin said. “I’m going to get velvet wallpaper just like at Lung Chung.”
    While Lung Chung is Kevin’s favorite restaurant because it is very fancy, and Kevin likes fancy things, it’s not my favorite. Because in addition to having velvet wallpaper, it also serves turtle soup. It even keeps a turtle in a big plastic pond—with its own island to sit on—on the floor inside the door when you walk in.
    So far no one in our town has ever ordered turtle soup. I know, because I check the turtle every time we go there, and it’s always been there.
    But you never know. Someone could order the turtlesoup any day. And when that day comes, the turtle will be gone. This is cruelty to animals, if you ask me.
    Thinking about that turtle always makes me mad.
    “Mom already said you couldn’t have velvet wallpaper,” I pointed out.
    “No, she didn’t,” Kevin said. “She said I could get velvet pirate wallpaper.”
    “There’s no such thing, Kevin.”
    “Yes, there is. And I’m going to get a lamp like they have on all the tables at Lung Chung, too.”
    “You can’t have a red stained-glass lamp in your bedroom , stupid.”
    “Yes, I can,” Kevin said. “And you’re stupid not to like this house. This house is the best. ”
    “No, it’s not,” I said. Maybe it was because I was thinking about that turtle at Lung Chung. Or maybe it was just because I was thinking about our house. In any case, suddenly, I was really, really mad. “It’s dark and cold and ugly.”
    Mark said, “You know what, Allie? You’re ugly. Hey—I’m telling! Then you’re not going to get your kitten!”
    I didn’t care, though. I didn’t care if he told on me for punching him. Because I didn’t punch him that hard, for one thing, and it was only on the foot, anyway, the only part of him I could reach with him in the tree.
    It doesn’t count if it doesn’t hurt. That’s a rule.
    Or it would be when I got home and wrote it down, anyway.
    So I turned my back on them—even though I guess technically I was sort of supposed to be keeping an eye on them—and walked down the alley (there’s an alley between our new house and the house next door) to the front yard and was standing there feeling ugly—as ugly as Mark had accused me of looking—when I heard voices and looked over to the house next door and noticed something I hadn’t noticed before.
    And that was that there was a girl about my own age doing back handsprings in the front yard of her own house.

RULE #5
You Can’t Let Your Family Move into a Haunted House
    Not only was there a girl my age doing back handsprings in her front yard, but there was an older girl there as well, tossing a baton—a real one, like the kind majorettes in parades on TV use—in the air, and actually catching it as it came down.
    At first, I kind of just stood there staring at them because they were the only forms of life I’d seen in our new neighborhood the whole time we’d been there. All the houses on our new street were just like ours—big and scary-looking with lots of turrets