Puppet Pandemonium Read Online Free Page B

on Earth Day, my friends and I entered a contest to find an alternate means of transportation to school. Dad made a school bus out of plywood for me, and we walked to school carrying it. We stuck our heads out the windows and waved to people in cars. The whole idea was to save energy and keep the air clean. The newspaper took our picture and we won first prize. There wasn't anything Dad couldn't build. He'd built Gram's puppet house and dozens of shelves for Mom. When Gram saw all Mom's shelves, she threw her hands up in the air.
    “Carole,” she said. “You have more shelves than Wal-Mart.”
    I had noticed a map of Texas tacked up on the bulletin board in the kitchen. Mom had drawn smiley faces around the Alamo. She drew smiley faces on everything whenever she wanted to make a point. It had practically taken an act of Congress to get her to stop drawing them on my lunch sacks last year in fourth grade. She was into nutrition big-time, and she thought smileys would remind me to eat the dried fruit she packed in my lunches. It only reminded me to throw it out. Who eats dried apricots, anyway?
    “I don't think Davy Crockett would have appreciated smiley faces on the Alamo,” I told her, turning the TV on. I wanted to catch my favorite cartoons before the cable was turned off.
    I guess she was listening because later in the day the smiley faces were gone, replaced by a couple of long-horn steers instead. It wouldn't have been so bad except she forgot to draw tails on them. Mom was never going to be van Gogh.
    “We've got a job to do here,” she said, nudging me from my cartoon stupor. “Come help me.”
    “What about my job helping with Gram's shows? Don't you even care about that?”
    “You can get another job when we get to Texas,” she said.
    “Yeah, like what? Herding cattle?”
    “Pack!” she said, grabbing a stack of dishes.
    Lately I tried not to hang around in one room too long without working—if I held still for more than a minute, Mom might wrap me in newspaper and pack me in a crate. She carried around the tape like it was her best friend. She taped and untaped boxes all day. She and the tape dispenser were forming a close relationship. She even slept with the tape by her bed in case she thought of something to wrap during the night.
    There was a plate of Gram's cookies on the table. I grabbed a handful and started wrapping some of my stuff. When I got to the boots, I shoved them down in a box. The main thing was not to let them be seen or Dad might expect me to wear them my first day at school. No way was that going to happen. He had told both Mom and me that meeting people in a small town and making new friends was as easy as falling off a log.
    If he wanted me to wear those boots to school, I was going to fall for sure. But it wouldn't be off a log. It would be off the school bus. Did a small town even own a school bus? Then a horrible thought crossed my mind. I hoped the kids didn't ride horses to school. The last horse I'd ridden was at the Londonderry Mall when I was three years old. It was a wooden pony on the carousel. When it started going up and down, I screamed to get off.
    “I'll never meet anyone as great as Sam or the guys on my Little League team,” I said, tossing a pillow into my box.
    “Oh, Baker,” Mom said. “You'll make lots of friends. Just wait and see. This is going to be an adventure.”
    I thought about what Gram had said about coming to Texas and giving a show in my new school if I needed her to. Having a grandmother who could give a puppet show might be as good as having a dad who managed the neighborhood theater. At least I didn't have a funny haircut, and maybe I wouldn't have to eat alone.
    I hated broccoli.

T he Seattle Seagulls gave me a going-away/birthday swim party at Sam's house. We played water baseball and I covered first base for the last time with my teammates. There were a piñata and a cool treasure hunt too.
    I got some great gifts: sports stuff, a