Read Online The Waffler by Gail Donovan - Free Book Online Page B

Leonard Schwarz the third. Two: Leo had one sister (who had lice last year) and her name was Harriet. Three: Leo and Harriet had a golden retriever named Noodle. Four: Leo’s favorite food was pizza and his favorite dessert was apple pie. Five: Leo was a Little Lion Scout, and next month his Scout troop was marching in the parade. And he wanted Monty to come and watch.
    â€œSure,” said Monty.
    â€œPromise?” asked Leo. “Definitely you promise?”
    Why did kindergartners want to promise all the time? He had promised Kieran he’d be her Buddy, and then wound up with Winnie and Finn, too. Promises could be dangerous. But Leo had been a pretty good sport, and Monty figured he owed him.
    â€œDefinitely, absolutely, positively promise,” said Monty. “I’ll be there.”

A rmed with his five facts, Monty managed to write his sloppy copy about Leo the next Monday at school. That was the good news. The bad news was that from then on, his whole life started revolving around being a Buddy.
    Monty thought Leo had been pretty cool about Kieran and Winnie and Finn. But Leo still had to make sure that the other kids knew that he was the
real
Buddy, and he did this by running out to Monty’s spot by the fence just about every day. If Leo saw Monty with Kieran, he showed up. If Leo saw Monty with Winnie, or with Finn, he showed up. And if Leo saw Monty all alone, he showed up, too.
    It was all part of the unspoken deal: Leo didn’t tell on him about the extra Buddies, and Monty didn’t tell Leo he couldn’t hang out. Because the last thing Monty wanted was the teachers finding out. He’d probably be hauled off to the social worker’s office. Monty lived in constant fear that Jasmine Raines was going to tell by accident. Somehow she’d managed not to, so far, but Monty figured it was only a matter of time.
    In the meantime, he had to keep finding books small enough to fit into his back pocket.
    â€œYou want
small
books?” asked Mrs. Harkins, the librarian, who had a streak of purple in her dark brown hair. “Do you mean, short? Not too many pages?”
    â€œI mean, tiny,” explained Monty, holding up his hands to show the size he needed.
    Mrs. Harkins tilted her purple streak to one side, as if the idea of a fourth grader reading a tiny book made her head hurt. “We do have some tiny books,” she said. “But they’re mostly picture books. You don’t want a chapter book?”
    Monty shook his head. “I want little books,” he said. “A whole bunch.”
    Mrs. Harkins still had a puzzled tilt to her purple head, but she found what he wanted. She gave him
Harold and the Purple Crayon.
She gave him
The Little Fur Family
and
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
. Best of all, she showed him about twenty books by the same author, Beatrix Potter. There were books about rabbits and ducks and frogs, and even one about a rat named Samuel Whiskers. Everybody’s favorite was still
Chicken Soup
, though.
    â€œâ€˜In January it’s so nice
    While slipping on the sliding ice,
    To sip hot chicken soup with rice.’”
    The kids liked to chime in. Kieran: Sipping once. Winnie: Sipping twice. Finn: Sipping chicken soup. Leo: with rice!
    Monty didn’t actually mind hanging out with the kindergartners. They were funny. They thought he was super cool, just because he could read. But hanging out with kindergartners was sort of like sitting at the nut-free table. Monty might as well have hung up a sign on the fence saying big-kid-free zone. After that first day, Sierra and Jasmine and Lagu pretty much left him alone. Sometimes Jasmine showed up to say hi, but then she ran off again. Lagu came over once in a while, but he couldn’t sit still and he usually took off halfway through a book to race around with the other fourth-grade guys, who stayed far away, as if they were allergic to little kids. If they did swing by, running in