Read Online The Graham Cracker Plot by Shelley Tougas - Free Book Online Page B

ran, too. The car was in a yard, about ten feet from a white house with a front porch. Graham banged on the door and tried to open it, but it was locked.
    â€œIs it a house?” Ashley shouted through her sweater.
    He banged some more. “Yeah, it’s a house.”
    I pushed the doorbell over and over. Nothing.
    Then another crash of lightning hit so close, the hair on my arm tingled. Ashley screamed, “Break the window! Kick in the door!”
    Graham pointed at a truck in the driveway. “Hold my arm, Ashley! Follow me.”
    I had no idea why we’d get in a pickup truck, having just escaped a car, but Ashley did the clutch-and-run, and I raced behind them. He opened the truck’s door, looked inside, and pressed a garage door opener. Sure enough, the garage door opened. We ran into the garage. Graham hit another button on the wall, and the garage door closed and shut out the storm.
    We huddled together by a door leading to the house. The garage was stuffed with a rusty little car and a heap of junk: bikes, a picnic table, lawn chairs, a lawn mower, a tool chest, cardboard boxes, big recycling bins.
    Graham raised his eyebrow. “So who’s not the King of Stupid?”
    I didn’t answer. I wandered through the garage, shivering and checking for things that might help. There was a bow and arrow hanging from the wall. But none of us knew how to use it. A shovel. A shovel could help. I leaned it against the door. Hammer? Sure.
    â€œGood idea.” Graham started poking through boxes.
    A bowling ball? Maybe. Christmas lights? Not so much.
    â€œI’m cold! I’m hungry!” Ashley’s face was still covered with the sweater. The garage door rattled in the wind. We flinched when lightning walloped nearby.
    â€œWe need a safe basement,” Ashley said. “I’m cold. I’m hungry. I need a blanket.”
    Graham turned the handle on the door leading to the house. The door opened, and the house invited us in. More or less.

 
    DEAR JUDGE HENRY,
    We called, “Hello? Can you help us?” No voice answered, but I swear there was a feeling . The house seemed to smile and open its arms and say, “Come. Be warm and dry and safe. Go to my basement.” If those people had been home, they would not have told two cute kids and a nice lady with a wet sweater on her head to stand in the lightning. You said yourself they are perfectly nice people who just happened to have the wrong house in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perfectly nice people would have said, “Come. Be warm and dry and safe. Go to our basement.” Besides, we dripped puddles on the pretty wood floor, and that was rude.
    We found the basement right away—it was off the kitchen. I led Ashley down the stairs. The basement was old and dark and damp, but it had a laundry room and a faded couch against the wall.
    â€œYou can take that off now. We’re safe,” I told Ashley. She unraveled it slowly. Rain had soaked right through the sweater. The black-bob wig twisted and clung to her head like a second skin.
    â€œGraham, please get my suitcase from the trunk,” she said.
    â€œAre you kidding?”
    â€œNo. I need different hair. Go get it.”
    Even I didn’t want Graham fried up by lightning. “Ashley, we’ll get it after the storm, okay?”
    She said, “It’s not okay. I need hair. This wig is ruined. I need my hair. Graham, don’t you understand? My suitcase has my hair.”
    â€œFine,” he said. “Give me the keys.”
    â€œI think they’re still in the car.”
    He slouched up the steps. “Graham!” I said. “This is stupid. Get back here! I mean it!”
    Graham acted like he didn’t hear me. I wanted to rip Ashley’s wig off her head and smack her with it. We shivered and waited. As long as he was risking his life, I hoped he’d remember to bring the backpacks. We had clothes for the