My Almost Epic Summer Read Online Free PDF

savings! Ha ha ha! Are you gonna be a crybaby about it?”
    Lainie’s eyes well up.
    “If you cry, he wins,” I whisper.
    “Then Evan wins and you won,” bleats Lainie, “and I don’t win anything!”
    She’s got a point. Anyway, there’s no consoling her when she’d wanted it so badly. I sweep my eleven dollars’ worth of chips into a pile. “And now I’m trading chips for the real cash. Rules are rules.”
    Lainie and Evan hand over their money with sad eyes but no argument. For a moment, I feel awful, and I contemplate giving both Prior kids their money back. But then I remind myself how easily they come by their allowance, and always for tasks like taking out the trash or making their beds. Chores that, in my house, Beth Ann Morse calls “pulling your weight.”
    So I decide that this time I’ll take the cash, but going forward, I’ll set a correct, babysitterly example. “Next time, we play with chips, for chips, and only chips,” I assure them.
    Evan bunches his mouth as Lainie wipes her nose on her arm. They both look pretty defeated. “Um, so are we going to Larkin’s now?” Evan asks.
    “Goodie! Larkin’s!” Lainie hiccups.
    Only I’m not feeling so great. I think I can still taste desiccated fruitcake in my molars. “I’ve got another idea,” I say. “How about I just turn on the backyard sprinkler and we run through it and then go watch TV?” The sprinkler was a favorite diversion of last summer.
    For a second, they don’t say anything, and I really think they’re going to punish me. Force me to get on Judith’s three-thousand-pound bike and ride them over to Larkin’s, just to spite my stomach’s queasy churning.
    “Yeah, okay. You don’t look too good,” says Lainie. “The sprinkler’s around back.”
    “Let’s do mud slides,” says Evan. “We did that last year. Remember how you were the mud monster?”
    “Sure,” I say. How did I manage to scheme up so many activities for the Prior kids last year?
    “Goodie! Mud monster!” Lainie is jumping up and down. Evan is already running for the door, and I know I’m off the hook. The Priors are sweet kids, mostly, and not too hard to please. Probably I don’t give them enough credit for that.

I Am Slightly Slighted
     
     
     
    JUDITH DROPS ME off at the town library so that I can restock. After everything that Humbert Humbert has put me through, I need a more sensible love story, and Sister Soledad has recommended Jane Eyre. Then again, she’d also recommended Lolita. I am coming to realize that Sister has eclectic passions.
    I have to walk all the way home. Mom and Roy are sitting on deck chairs out back. They look fairly tranquil, despite last night’s fighting. Good. “Hi!” I call out. “Yum, is that steak I smell?”
    “Roy’s grilling. But I thought you stopped eating red meat!” exclaims Mom. Code: None for you.
    “I’m grilling chicken for you, special,” calls Roy. Code: Don’t touch the steak.
    “Cool!” I call. Code: I am not going to whine about it. Whether Roy didn’t remember that I’d switched back to eating red meat, or he didn’t want to pay up for the extra steak—either way, it’s not worth making into an issue. And Mom and I both know she can’t give me any of her steak since Roy might be upset by the violation of his romantic gesture. Mom is Roy’s mood-o-meter. She can detect the ghostliest signal that he is impatient or tired or has “low blood sugar”—Mom’s pseudo-scientific “evidence” in defense of Roy’s random personality swings.
    “Real sorry ’bout the steaks, kiddo.” When we meet up in the kitchen, Roy gives me a jittery smile that makes me jittery, too. “The chicken’ll be up in ten minutes.”
    “Roy, will you choose some music?” Mom calls through the screen door. “You know I never pick the right tunes.”
    “You got it, baby.”
    I watch Roy trot over and start to fiddle with the knobs. He’ll probably break it, he’s so non-mechanically