My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish Read Online Free PDF Page A

for the skateboard to hit me. Concussion number two, here I come. Then I heard the skateboard jump off the side of the slide. I looked up to see it flip midair, like when the boarders at the park do half-pipes and twists.
    Except this was a goldfish in a plastic bag, not a skateboarding kid. And the thing about goldfish in bags is that when the board goes upside down they have no way to hang on. The skateboard flew over me and Mark and then Frankie started to fall. He must have been ten feet in the air.
    I rolled over onto my back and held out my hands to catch him. The bag hit my hands but I couldn’t hold it. It splatted on my chest and the bag burst open. Water sprayed everywhere and Frankie was left flip-flopping around on my T-shirt.
    â€œNo!” I shouted. “Frankie!” I jumped up, cupping him in my hands. “I’ve got you, Frankie,” I said as I turned to Pradeep. “Get some water! Quick!”
    Frankie’s goldfish mouth was opening and closing as if he were gasping for breath. His eyes were still the soft green color. He flicked his tail and wriggled, and then he stopped moving completely. “Hang on, Frankie!” I screamed.
    Pradeep ran over to the slide with a watering can full of rainwater that he had grabbed from next to the shed. I dropped Frankie into it.
    Pradeep, Sami, and me all sat around the watering can and stared at Frankie, unmoving in the water. “You turned the skateboard on purpose, didn’t you? You didn’t want to hurt me,” I said.
    Mark was still lying in the sandbox, moaning, “The goldfish? My skateboard? Why am I wet?”
    Frankie floated belly up in the watering can. He didn’t move a fin.
    â€œSwishy little fishy?” Sami said, sniffling. Her bottom lip started to wobble again. Not in a Richter-scale-level tantrum kind of way but in a sadder than a little kid ought ever to feel kind of way.
    â€œHe’s gone,” I said. The millipedes that were swimming in my stomach curled up into a big heavy millipede lump.
    â€œI’m sorry,” said Pradeep.
    â€œNot swishy?” whispered Sami. A tear rolled down her cheek and dripped off her snotty nose into the watering can.
    And that’s when it happened. Frankie started to swish his tail. Just a little at first, then his gills started flapping and his mouth opened and closed and then he flipped over and started swimming in circles around and around.
    â€œFishy!” said Sami, and hugged the watering can.
    â€œFrankie, you’re back!” I said, hardly able to believe that he was swimming around again. “Who’s a good zombie fish?” I said, and stroked him gently behind the gills.
    â€œHey, you know what we just discovered?” Pradeep said.
    â€œI know!” I said. “That the one thing more powerful than a battery for bringing a fish back to life is…”
    Pradeep said with me at the same time, “Toddler snot.”

 

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    Beep, beep.
    We heard Mom’s car pull into the drive.
    â€œOh no!” I said.
    Pradeep and I quickly ran over to Mark and helped him sit up. He was still holding on to his head where he had banged it when he fell into the sandbox.
    Sami just sat there, still hugging the watering can.
    Mom came straight around the back of the house and ran over to us. She could tell there was something wrong. Moms have this thing where they know stuff that should be impossible to know. Like that you didn’t eat your carrot sticks at lunch, or that it was you who put the ham slice in the CD player to see what ham sounded like, or that your undead zombie goldfish hypnotized your neighbor’s daughter and then tried to kill your EVIL SCIENTIST big brother but at the last minute changed its mind to save your life. You know, that kind of thing.
    I took one look at Mom and was sure she would figure it out. It was so obvious what had happened.
    But the first thing she said was, “What on earth