Read Online Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus by Kristen Tracy - Free Book Online

I was tumbling into sleep.
    The next morning when I woke up, the cushioned toilet seat had already been installed. And when I went to school, nobody made fun of me for falling underneath the bus. And Tony Maboney had a temperature and went home early and didn’t feel up to poking me in the shoulder before he left. And in the hallway, Ms. Golden complimented me on my fancy socks becausethey had ruffles on them. And during science, as we learned about how air pollutants affect asthma and can also make it easier for people to catch a cold or the flu, that low-hanging hornet’s wire broke and the hornet fell on me.
    “It has a dangerous hind end!” I screamed.
    “Ah, it broke,” Mr. Hawk said, pulling the insect out of my hair.
    And it had! That hornet’s head came right off its body and landed next to my shoe. Also, I kicked it.
    And so Mr. Hawk decided to replace it with a neat-looking cricket.
    “Crickets don’t sting, right?” I asked. Because I was basically sure, but I wanted to check.
    “Right, they sing,” he said.
    “Sweet,” I said, staring up at the new bug.
    My day kept getting better and better. For lunch, I ate pizza with sausage on it. And when I got home from school, the meditation wall was already repainted a soft white.
    “Hi, honey!” my mom said. She had a paint roller in her hand. “I’m priming.”
    “Great!” I said.
    “Everything will be the color of the meditation wall,” she said. “It’s called Cotton. Do you like it?”
    “Very much,” I said.
    “Me too,” she said. “And so does your father.”
    But I wasn’t surprised. Of course we liked the color Cotton. Everybody likes cotton. Because it’s the type of material that doesn’t itch or melt in the dryer. Plus, when you make it out of sugar, you can eat it at the zoo.
    My house felt very wonderful. And then Mrs. Bratberg called and needed a mother’s helper for the next day, which meant more money for my calling card.
    As I watched my mother prime the ceiling, I thought about what she’d said about life having ups and downs. Maybe she was right. Maybe life was like a series of mountains. Up and down. Up and down. Maybe somehow all the unfair things and the fair things balanced out.
    I walked through my house and fell face-first onto my bed. This was all very marvelous news. In fact, it was so marvelous I thought about calling Aunt Stella and telling her that she had been right. I was ten. I didn’t need to worry about money. Or being in the hole. Besides, the hole must not have been as big as my dad thought. My parents had declared a truce! They didn’t need mediation after all! This made me feel so fantastic that I decided to go for a walk around my house and celebrate. I grabbed a banana and went to the backyard.
    “I’m going outside to do some stuff,” I said.
    “Wear your gloves,” my mother said. “On your hands.”
    This was a good reminder. Sometimes I kept them tucked inside my pocket.
    Even though the ground was snowy, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled around like a very thrilled dingo. That’s when I saw something. It was a squirrel. And I’d seen this squirrel before. It had been visiting my window for over a year. It did this for two reasons. One, the squirrel liked me. Two, I often left the squirrel yummy food like popcorn and lunch meat.
    That’s when I realized something important. This squirrel probably wanted to be my pet. Because it was always looking for me. I squinted to make sure it was the same squirrel I’d been taking care of all year. I remembered it as being fluffier during the summer. But then I realized that squirrels might not look exactly the same all year long. Because they lived in the wild, and those conditions were severe.
    The squirrel twitched its tail. It looked cold. But was I really ready for another pet? What if I found Checkers? Would she get along with my new pet squirrel? My dad had told me that I was never going to see Checkers again, due to the fact