The Penderwicks in Spring Read Online Free PDF Page A

and try to escape. Maybe you should tie her to the crib.” He’d suggested this many times, but no one would take him up on the idea.
    “That would be dangerous, as well as impolite. I never tied you to anything, did I?”
    “I don’t remember.”
    “Take my word for it. I didn’t.”
    Ben knew why his mother was there. She’d come to say good night because she was going back to her office at the university and wouldn’t be home again until after he was asleep. Ben was proud of his mother for being an astrophysicist—Rafael’s mother was a psychologist, and neither boy thought brains anywhere near as fascinating as stars—but he didn’t like it when she went out to work at night. And he didn’t like it when his father did, either. So he’d developed a strategy to keep people at home—keep them talking as long as he could. Though it hadn’t yet worked, Ben never stopped trying.
    “Mom, I found this today.” He showed her the rock. “Do you think it’s a dinosaur egg turned into a fossil?”
    “I’m afraid not.”
    “Are you sure? Because it would be worth a lot of money.”
    “I’m sure, honey.”
    This was a setback. But Ben was too attached to this rock to give up right away. “Maybe it’s an outer-space rock, worn into this funny shape by its passage through the earth’s atmosphere. That would be worth lots of money, too.”
    “Not that, either. Although it’s a very nice rock, it’s just a rock.”
    “You’re absolutely positive, right? Because Rafael says there are lots of space rocks around that nobody knows about. We’re going to make a movie about it someday called
Secret Rock Invasion.
He’s going to be the scientist and I’m going to be the alien in charge of sneaking the rocks to Earth.”
    One of the extra-good things about his mother was that she liked science fiction. Ben knew this and milked it as long as he could, all the way to the Delta Quadrant and rocks that formed whenever an extraterrestrial burped. But since she was still a grown-up, she kissed him good night and left for work long before he was ready to let her go.
    “Plus, no dinosaur egg,” he said, plopping himself down on the edge of the bottom bunk. “And no billion dollars.”
    Batty’s piano lessons were always good, but that evening’s was a great one. Her teacher, Mr. Trice, demonstrated how the Bach would sound if played by Scott Joplin, which led to Batty playing a Scott Joplin pieceas if she were Bach. Which led to much hilarity—Mr. Trice was like that. He insisted that music had to be fun, or why bother?
    Batty had never before tried to
think
like Bach—or like Scott Joplin—and was eager to do more of it when she got back home. But when she arrived, she found the way to her piano blocked by teenagers. This was happening more and more often, and she sometimes wished the piano could be moved out of the living room and up to her own room, where no teenagers ever went. Tonight the teenagers were: Jane, Artie, whom Jane had known since elementary school, and a boy named Donovan, a more recent addition. Jane actually had two friends named Donovan, both stocky soccer players with dark hair and glasses. At first Batty had thought they were brothers, with Donovan as their last name. But they were each Donovan Something Else—Batty never could remember what—and it didn’t matter anyway. Whichever Donovan was there, Batty was too shy to play Bach or Joplin in front of him. Or Artie, either, though she was more used to him.
    She went upstairs and knocked on Ben’s door, using their private signal—three quick knocks and a slap—and waited while he removed his hanger warning system and opened the door.
    “Did you bring me anything from Keiko?” he asked.
    She held up a paper bag full of cookies. Keiko,who was Mr. Trice’s daughter and also Batty’s best friend, liked baking with her own made-up recipes. Since sometimes disaster ensued, she used Ben to test her odder concoctions before they were