Turkey Monster Thanksgiving Read Online Free

thought about how she was going to be at somebody else’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was almost time to go home when she called me up to her desk. “Thank you very much,” she said.
    I stared at the top of her desk in confusion. What was she thanking me for?
    Her silver bracelets clinked together as she smoothed a piece of paper. “You wrote a very nice invitation,” she said.
    I stared at the note I wrote yesterday. I’d stuffed the wrong paper into my pocket. I’d turned in the invitation instead of the thank-you note! No wonder she’d winked at me.
    “Anyway,” she continued, “I wanted to be sure your dad knows you invited me?” Her voice was a question.
    My mind flew in a hundred directions. Ms. Morgan got my invitation first? Well, yes, she did. “Oh, yes,” I heard myself say. “We were talking about it just last night.”
    “I’m so glad,” Ms. Morgan said. “Will there be many of us? A big group?”
    “I don’t know yet,” I said. “For sure, you and Dad and me and Tyler.” Disgusting, gross Tyler. We would have to fix his manners. We definitely wouldn’t serve peanut butter.
    She glanced up at the clock. “Time to put things away, class,” she announced. She squeezed my hand and then bent close to me. Her dark hair smelled like vanilla pudding. “We need to keep this a secret,” she said. “Sometimes the other children think it’s not fair if the teacher goes to one child’s house.”
    She squeezed my hand again, and I raced back to my desk. Soon as I got home, I had to get my lists out of the trash.
    After supper, I curled up with Beautiful Living magazine. Every page had great ideas. “She’s coming,” I whispered. I added strings of cranberries and popcorn to my decorations list.
    As I turned the pages, I heard commercials on my radio. “You’ll want the very best for your Thanksgiving company,” the announcer kept saying. “For Ms. Morgan,” I whispered. I looked one more time at the magazine cover. For Ms. Morgan, I thought, maybe we should have turkey.
    The radio also said I needed mums from Francie’s Florist. Extra chairs from Party Rents. Mrs. Shaftoe’s frozen pies. Birdover’s cranberry candies. Plampton’s coffee.
    I wrote down everything. Just in case.
    Ms. Morgan was going to love Thanksgiving at our house.

Chapter 9
Claire Takes Pictures
    W EDNESDAY MORNING, I TOLD Dad I wanted to make decorations after all. I gave him a list of what I needed.
    “Fine,” he said. “The house will look very nice.”
    That day our class had a field trip to the Fire Department. The fire chief let us hold the big hose while water whooshed out at a pretend fire. She pushed a button in the truck and turned on the siren. We all covered our ears. The best part was after that when we got to practice escaping from a little house the Fire Department had built there.
    “My mom burned the carrots last night,” Sierra told the fire chief. “We didn’t have to eat them.”
    “We don’t burn food at our house,” Claire said.
    Sierra and I moved away from Claire to stand on the other side of the circle. “Are you on Claire’s guest list for Thanksgiving?” Sierra whispered.
    I shook my head. “Not any more. How about you?”
    “We’re going to Grandpa Jack’s,” Sierra whispered.
    Ms. Morgan shook her finger at us. We hushed. But now I knew Sierra and her parents couldn’t come to my house.
    After school, I let Tyler wear the Fire Department badge one of the firefighters had pinned to my jacket. I gave Dad our handouts about smoke alarms and fire extinguishers.
    “We’ll get new batteries for the smoke alarm next time we go to the store,” Dad said. “And a fire extinguisher, too. I hope we never have a fire, but if we do, we’ll be prepared.”
    “Did you get the cranberries for me?” I asked. “And the popcorn?”
    “Sure did,” he answered.
    “I’ll make them into those strings,” I told him. “The kind you hang up.”
    “Festoons?” he