The Manny Files book1 Read Online Free PDF

ladybug helmet. The manny was still wearing his flannel pajamas and cashmere socks. He wasn’t wearing any shoes. He handed us the lunches he had packed in old shopping bags.
    Tiffany and Company. Barneys. Bergdorf Goodman.
    India said, “These seem really heavy. What’s in them?”
    The manny said, “You’ll have to wait until lunch to find out.”
    “See you after school, fool.” I smiled at the manny.
    “See ya round town, clown,” he said back to me.
    “Catch you on the down low,” said India.
    “See ya. Wouldn’t wanna be ya. If you were in the zoo, I wouldn’t free ya,” said Lulu without a smile. We got on the bus, and I walked too close to the back of Lulu. She hates it when people step on her heels.
    The bus doors closed behind us, and we scanned the aisles for some seats. The whole bus looked at us like we were a group of circus clowns at an orphanage. Everybody wanted me to sit with them. When the bus started to move, I glanced out the window. The manny wasalongside the bus on my bike, leaning forward and gnashing his teeth, pretending to be racing with us. Lulu pulled out her three-ring binder and wrote it all down. I tried to peek over her shoulder to see what she was writing, but she covered it with her hand and said, “He’ll be gone by summer.”
    I looked at India, who scrunched up her face and shook her head no. She said, “Mom and Dad like him. Don’t worry about it.”
    But I can’t help it. I worry about everything. Asteroids hitting the earth. The deterioration of the ozone layer. Head lice.
    At lunchtime I walked into the cafeteria and searched the room for an empty seat. I walked by a boy named Craig. He put his hand down on the seat next to him and said that I couldn’t sit there. I didn’t want to sit there anyway. Craig is in my class and doesn’t like me. At the beginning of the school year he told me that my shoes were too clean. I told him that his shoes were too little. I thought it was a good comeback at the time, but he just laughed and kicked dirt on my shoes. Sarah helped me clean them off. She said he was a Neanderthal. India told me that a Neanderthal is a person with one big eyebrow instead of two and a hairy back. Dad’s a Neanderthal.
    When it’s my turn to kick in kickball, Craig always says, “He can’t kick. Everybody move closer.” The whole kickball game moves in closer. They move back out when it’s Sarah’s turn to kick.
    She can kick it over their heads.
    I spotted Sarah standing up and shaking her hands in the air like she was waving in an airplane. I went in for a landing on the orange stool next to hers. Sarah asked if I wanted a biscuit. It was really a cookie, but Sarah’s mom is from England, where they call cookies “biscuits,” moms “mums,” and toilets “loos.” I like going over to Sarah’s house because her mom always asks if I’d like a “spot of milk.” One time I drank way more than a spot and had to race to the loo. Sarah’s mom had hundreds of little perfume bottles on silver trays all over the bathroom counter. They looked like they had fallen out of a treasure chest. Blue, yellow, and orange liquids in the fanciest crystal bottles that I had ever seen. I picked up a little bottle that said TABU and misted my face with it. It stung my eyes and tasted like shampoo, but I didn’t care.
    When I walked back out into the kitchen, Sarah’s mom said, “Oh, my word. Somebody smells gorgeous.”
    I tried not to blush.
    I gladly took a biscuit from Sarah and reached into my Barneys lunch bag for something to trade with her. I pulled out a cheese and bacon sandwich (my favorite), a split-open pomegranate, a small bag of Gummy Bears, carrots, and a whole coconut, still in its shell. The coconut had a note written on it with black Sharpie. It said, BE INTERESTING. I think the manny put the coconut in my lunch to be funny. I looked across the cafeteria and spotted India. I held up the coconut and smiled. She held up a whole