Read Online Crunch by Leslie Connor - Free Book Online Page A

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    “Back! Back!” I said, and I aimed the air hose at her.
    “ Puh-leese! I’ve started lots of detail work and I want to see if I can throw a lot of paint at the barn all at once,” she said. “But I also need to be able to aim . And Dad said this would work, and I found the paint-sprayer attachment….” Shepaused and showed it to me. “I just need today to learn how to use it and then maybe a day or two more. Can’t you manage without it?”
    “Ye-sss,” I said. I flipped the hose out of my fingers.
    So there went the compressor on its cart, rolling out the door.
    Vince and I listened to Lil run it off and on for the next hour or so. Tough as she is about most things, Lil admits to being “shy of machines.” There were a lot of stops and starts. In between, we could hear paint hitting the side of the barn.
    I stopped Vince as he came through the shop on his way out to pick up Angus and Eva. “Does it sound like she has that pressure set kind of high?” I asked.
    “Like artillery,” Vince said. King of the short answer.
    He might have been gone ten minutes when I heard a sudden loud pop and a yelp. I dropped my work and ran around to the back. The dogs galloped beside me.
    The first thing I saw was the greasy blue paintshining on the side of the barn. Test splotches, I thought. Then I saw Lil. She was blue. Painted blue. Mostly down one arm and leg. A piece of wood she was holding was also partly blue. She was otherwise all right. She stood there looking at me with her eyes wide.
    “Oh! Dewey! Did you see that? W-what did it do?”
    I shook my head. I looked at the compressor and the sprayer head. Then I looked at Lil. Then I knew.
    “It painted you,” I blurted. I started laughing. Hard. I could barely speak. “The compressor holds a reserve even after you shut it down. There’s pressure in there, Lil! Did you have the sprayer propped on the fence post?”
    She nodded.
    “Well, it’s on the ground now. It must have landed on its trigger.”
    “Oh, my heck. What are the chances…” She looked down the length of her arm then up at me again.
    “Nice color!” I cheered.
    “This,” she said, “is pretty permanent stuff.”
    I laughed again. “At least it didn’t get you in the face,” I said, and I brought her a rag from her bucket. “Hey, check out your stunt double,” I said. I pointed to her headless silhouette on the barn. It was a pretty clean image. The plywood scrap in her hand made it look like she was holding a book out to an invisible someone.
    Lil drew a big breath. “Oh. Yes! Yes! Good little scary machine,” Lil said, and she ran up to the compressor and gave it a pat. “See?” she said, looking back at the side of the barn. “It’s perfect! Just what I wanted.”
    “You wanted to stencil yourself onto the barn?” I asked.
    “Well, not me . But—”
    I made wide eyes and stared back at her for a few seconds. “Goodie, Greatie!” I called. “Run for your lives!”

17
    LIL KEPT EXPERIMENTING. I KEPT WORKING. I was wheeling finished bikes out to the front for pickup like nobody’s business. For the first time in days, the spindle where we’d stuck all the quick-fix jobs was clear. I did a victory dance all the way to the house. I poured a cold drink of water and wet my head under the faucet. I made a bunch of come-and-get-it phone calls to customers. Back in the barn, I picked an order from the Parts or Problems spindle. These were usually Vince’s jobs. “And where in the heck is he anyway?” I mumbled. He’d been gone for over an hour. It just didn’t take that long to fetch Angus and Eva.
    Suddenly, I was ticked off. I’d bent overbackward to make the bike shop bearable. Mostly by getting him out a lot. I missed my morning rides to Sea Camp. Well, maybe I didn’t miss the slowpoke rides there. But I sure as heck missed the all-out sprints back home.
    Vince would never forget our twins. But he could easily lose track of time afterward. He was probably