Rebel McKenzie Read Online Free PDF Page B

you always walk like that?” I asked.
    â€œLike what?”
    We found a speck of shade and sat down. I divided the Neccos—chocolate, green, and yellow ones for me. Lacey Jane took all the pink, purple, and orange ones. That left Rudy with the white and black ones nobody wanted.
    â€œSo what d’you like to do?” I asked Lacey Jane.
    She shrugged. “Not much.”
    I’d known lots of kids like her. They bop along through life with no ambition. I decided to tell Lacey Jane all about myself. She was gobbling my candy.
    â€œWell, I’m practically a paleontologist,” I began. “I was supposed to go on a Kids’ Dig in Saltville this summer, but…I ran into financial difficulties.”
    â€œYou want to be a what ?”
    â€œA person who digs dead things up,” Rudy broke in. He stacked his Neccos, alternating licorice and peppermint.
    Lacey Jane flicked the back of his head. “Who asked you, Peanut Head?”
    â€œLeave him alone.” What was with this girl? One minute she was nice, the next she was the Bride of Frankenstein. “ Any way, at school they wanted me to play softball or basketball, but I told the coach I don’t like team sports. I wanted to learn fencing, but they don’t teach it. Too bad, because it’s a very noble sport.”
    Lacey Jane and even Rudy were quiet as I barreled on. Who put a nickel in me today? I always talked too much when I was nervous. Or fibbing.
    â€œIn band, I told the music teacher I didn’t want to play the clarinet because there were already about a hundred clarinet players. So I picked the euphonium. There’s only one euphonium.” I leaned back in the grass. “Ainsley Carter—she’s my best friend—we never hang around anybody else because they’re too boring and ordinary. Ainsley wears a black beret, even in the summertime, because she believes she was a beatnik in a former life.”
    â€œWhat’s a beatnik?” asked Rudy.
    â€œLike a hippie, only cleaner. Ainsley plans to open a bookstore that sells only old mystery books. But she’s at her grandmother’s in Tennessee all summer, and now I’m stuck here—” I stopped.
    Lacey Jane drew down one corner of her mouth. “Stuck in boring, ordinary Grandview Estates, you mean. With boring, ordinary people like me.”
    â€œI didn’t say—” I was saved by a car whirling into the driveway of the trailer across the street.
    A woman got out of the driver’s side. The front of her short hair dipped in three waves. One wave was platinum blond, the middle was reddish brown, and the last wave (and the rest of her hair) was dark brown. She looked like a triple-twist Tastee Freez cone.
    The woman’s high heels clicked on the pavement as she walked around to the passenger door. She opened it like she was a chauffeur and the person inside was a foreign dignitary.
    Out stepped a girl the same age as Lacey Jane and me. She had a plastic, blue-eyed prettiness, like those dolls you keep on a shelf. Her hair was all one color, blond, long, and curly. The sequins on her poufy yellow party dress sparkled like stars.
    And—I kid you not—she wore a tiara . On a Monday morning!
    The woman unlocked the front door of their trailer. “C’mon and rest now, sweetie.”
    â€œI want to practice my song again,” the girl said. “I was a little off today.”
    â€œDon’t stay in the sun long,” her mother said. “You have to be careful of your fair complexion.”
    â€œI know. A young lady can never start taking care of her skin too soon.” When her mother closed the door, the girl took a little bitty guitar from the front seat. Not a toy guitar—just small.
    Then she planted her yellow strap shoes wide apart and began strumming the little guitar.
    â€œYessir, that’s my baby. Nossir, don’t mean maybe—” As she played and