The Fox Hunt Read Online Free PDF Page A

what he’d done. She was surprised to find that he’d done exactly what he’d said he’d done. She had forgotten to make her adjectives and nouns agree. He’d made them all agree. Stevie was astonished. Her Spanish teacher would be, too.
    Stevie had three classes before the midmorning break, the first time she saw Michael that day at school. She wanted to buy herself an apple at the snack cart, but she’d been in such a hurry that she’d left her wallet at home.
    “Here, I’ve got a quarter you can have,” Michael said when he saw his sister’s problem.
    “You do?”
    “Sure,” he said, handing it to her.
    “Do you want me to sign an IOU or something?” Stevie asked.
    “Nah,” Michael said. “I trust you.”
    Stevie was speechless. She accepted the quarter and bought the apple, thinking all the while about the hundreds of IOUs Michael had made her sign for him over the years.
    Something was up.
    One of Stevie’s classmates came up to her while she was chewing thoughtfully on her apple.
    “Wasn’t that your brother?” the girl asked. Stevie nodded. “The one who wears Spiderman underwear?” Stevie nodded again. “He’s so sweet!” Stevie nodded once more. “So how could you do something so mean to a little boy who is so sweet?” the girl asked.
    Stevie gave her a withering look. “He’s not always that sweet. And besides, I think the reason he gave me the money for the apple is to see that I stay healthy. See, I already owe him over twenty-three dollars. He sees this as protecting an investment.” Stevie tossed the remains of the apple into a garbage can and headed for science. It was going to be easier to look at the insides of a frog than to figure out what her brothers were really up to.
    “W HAT ’ S THE MATTER with you?” Lisa asked Carole as they stood next to one another in the outfield of a softball game. Carole had such a pained look on her face that it was clear she would be unable to catch the merest pop fly, much less a tricky line drive.
    “It’s Stevie,” she said.
    “I thought so,” Lisa replied.
    “Look, even though her brothers didn’t say or do anything last night when we were at her house doesn’t mean that they aren’t ever going to do or say anything to Stevie in retaliation.”
    “I’m afraid you’re right.”
    “I
am
right,” Carole said. “After all, they
are
Stevie’sbrothers, and her skills at practical jokes and revenge are so well developed that they had to come from somewhere. I mean, you can’t just
learn
that kind of stuff. It’s born in you.” Carole glanced up. “Why is that boy waving at me?” she asked.
    There was a
thump
as a softball landed on the ground in front of Carole.
    “That’s why,” Lisa said. She picked up the ball and tossed it toward the infield, totally oblivious to the classmate of hers who was dashing madly for third base. “But back to Stevie, remember the time Chad got so tired of Stevie not putting her laundry away that he washed all of her riding clothes with too much bleach?”
    “Exactly!” Carole said. “Her jeans were white, and her breeches got all shredded because they were made of synthetics.”
    “And her mother was so mad at Chad for ruining all those expensive clothes that she made him wear his underwear, even though it had turned pink when Stevie washed it with her new T-shirt.”
    “We just
heard
about the underwear,” Carole reminded her. “But everybody could
see
the pink socks.”
    “He wasn’t a very good sport about it, was he?”
    Thump!
Another ball landed nearby. Carole moved aside so another classmate could run over and pick it up. Talking about Stevie seemed a lot more important than playing softball.
    “And that was just the laundry wars,” Carole said. “Remember the time Alex took Stevie’s book report and handed it in, saying it was his?”
    “Who could forget?” Stevie asked. “Stevie was so angry that she took a book report Michael had gotten a poor grade on and handed