Project Mulberry Read Online Free PDF Page B

it. In the whole class, there was only one kind of leaf someone else got that we didn't have, and it wasn't really fair, because it was from a hibiscus tree that grew in a pot and was taken inside for the winter.
    That's why I was pretty sure the flyers wouldn't help, so I did my best to make them look good. We printed them on fluorescent green paper, and I made the font really big so you could read it from far away.
    We stopped at several places on the way to school. The gas station on the corner of our street. The convenience store across from our school. Three or four big utility poles on busy corners.
    The lady who worked at the gas station was really nice. I'd never met her before. My parents went to that gas station, but they used pay-at-the-pump, so I always just stayed in the car.
    When we first went in to talk to her, I thought she was a little scary. She had orange hair piled sky-high and hairsprayed rock-solid, and she also had the worst teeth I'd ever seen. They were this nasty olive-green color. But she let us put the flyer up in the window and said she'd be sure to point it out to people.
    That was Wednesday morning. I was pretty jumpy that day after school—every time the phone rang I was afraid it would be somebody saying they had a mulberry tree.
    But nobody called that day.
    No calls the next day, either.
    And none on Friday.
    I was right. There weren't any mulberry trees in our neighborhood.
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    By Saturday afternoon, even Patrick was sick of hanging around waiting for our phone to ring, so we walked to the convenience store to get slushies. I got the 79-cent size, and gave the cashier a dollar bill plus four pennies so my change would be a quarter.
    Illinois.
    Gak. I already had two Illinoises and had gotten at least a dozen more.
    Still no Connecticut.
    No calls Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. On Tuesday we went to the Wiggle meeting. This was another hurdle. If Mr. Maxwell knew where there was a mulberry tree, I'd be in trouble; I'd have to start all over again, hoping for a different snag.
    The Wiggle meeting started out with bad news—bad for me, that is. Patrick went right to Mr. Maxwell and told him we wanted to do silkworms for our project. And Mr. Maxwell said okay. In fact, he seemed to think it was a great idea. "A first for me," he said. "Never had anyone do a silkworm project before. It'll be unique. Good job, kids."
    I cheered up—secretly, of course—a minute later, when Mr. Maxwell told us that he didn't know anyone with a mulberry tree. "I'll ask around," he said. "You never know."
    Everyone talked about how their projects were going. Abby brought in a pie every week. She was planning to enter the pie competition and was perfecting her crust. She gave each of us a bite or two and then would ask a million questions about the crust. "Was it flakier last week?" she'd say, or, "It's still not flaky enough, is it?" I wanted to be helpful, but I was hopeless at trying to remember—they all tasted good to me.
    Tony and Nathan had baby tomato plants they were growing from seed. Angela had baby potato plants she was growing from the eyes of a bunch of different kinds of potatoes.
    Kevin was raising a goose. The goose's name was Gossage. "The baseball player," Kevin said. "My dad's favorite pitcher." Patrick explained it to me. A while back there had been a Chicago White Sox pitcher named Rich Gossage, whose nickname was "Goose." Sometimes Kevin brought Gossage to the meeting to show us the tricks he was learning. Gossage could already honk on command and untie Kevin's shoelaces.
    Everyone else was way ahead of us.
    Patrick looked a little discouraged on our walk home. I decided it would be a good time to put my plan into action.
    "The flyers didn't work," I said, "and Mr. Maxwell doesn't know anyone with a mulberry tree." I shook my head and sighed. "It's not looking good, Patrick—maybe we should think of a backup plan, just in case."
    He scowled. "I don't want a backup," he