by Ann Cameron
For more than forty years,
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Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York
Text copyright © 1986 by Ann Cameron
Illustrations copyright © 1986 by Ann Strugnell
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eISBN: 978-0-307-80184-5
Reprinted by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers
v3.1
For ROSALIE GROSSMAN
whose insight, wit, sympathy and faith
helped me around the curves in my river
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
A Day When Frogs Wear Shoes
The Bet
I Learn Firefighting I Wish for Smokey the Bear
Superboy and Me
Huey Makes the Leap
The Box
A Curve in the River
About the Author
everything stands still. We didn’t know what to do. We were watching the grass grow. It didn’t grow fast.
“You know something?” Gloria said. “This is a slow day.”
“It’s so slow the dogs don’t bark,” Huey said.
“It’s so slow the flies don’t fly,” Gloria said.
“It’s so slow ice cream wouldn’t melt,” I said.
“If we had any ice cream,” Huey said.
“But we don’t,” Gloria said.
We watched the grass some more.
“We better do something,” I said.
“Like what?” Gloria asked.
“We could go visit Dad,” Huey said.
“That’s a terrible idea,” I said.
“Why?” Huey asked. “I like visiting Dad.”
My father has a shop about a mile from our house, where he fixes cars. Usually it is fun to visit him. If he has customers, he always introduces us as if we were important guests. If he doesn’t have company, sometimes he lets us ride in the cars he puts up on the lift. Sometimes he buys us treats.
“Huey,” I said, “usually, visiting Dad is a good idea. Today, it’s a dangerous idea.”
“Why?” Gloria said.
“Because we’re bored,” I said. “My dad hates it when people are bored. He says the world is so interesting nobody should ever be bored.”
“I see,” Gloria said, as if she didn’t.
“So we’ll go see him,” Huey said, “and we just won’t tell him we’re bored. We’re bored, but we won’t tell him.”
“Just so you remember that!” I said.
“Oh, I’ll remember,” Huey said.
Huey was wearing his angel look. When he has that look, you know he’ll never remember anything.
Huey and I put on sweat bands. Gloria put on dark glasses. We started out.
The sun shined up at us from the sidewalks. Even the shadows on the street were hot as blankets.
Huey picked up a stick and scratched it along the sidewalk. “Oh, we’re bored,” he muttered. “Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored!”
“Huey!” I yelled. I wasn’t bored anymore. I was nervous.
Finally we reached a sign:
That’s my dad’s sign. My dad is Ralph.
The parking lot had three cars in it. Dad was inside the shop, lifting the hood of another car. He didn’t have any customers with him, so we didn’t get to shake hands and feel like visiting mayors or congressmen.
“Hi, Dad,” I said.
“Hi!” my dad said.
“We’re—” Huey said.
I didn’t trust Huey. I stepped on his foot.
“We’re on a hike,” I said.
“Well, nice of you to stop by,” my father said. “If you want, you can stay awhile and help me.”
“O.K.,” we said.
So Huey sorted nuts and bolts. Gloria shined fenders with a rag. I held a new windshield wiper while my dad put it on a car window.
“Nice work, Huey and Julian and Gloria!” my dad said when we were done.
And then he sent us to the store across the street to buy paper cups and ice cubes and a can of frozen lemonade.
We mixed the lemonade in the shop. Then we sat out under the one tree by the side of the driveway and drank all of it.
“Good lemonade!” my father said. “So what are you kids going to do now?”
“Oh, hike!” I said.
“You know,” my father answered, “I’m surprised at you kids picking a hot day like today for a hike. The ground is so hot. On a day like this, frogs wear shoes!”
“They do?” Huey said.
“Especially if they go hiking,” my father said. “Of course, a lot of frogs, on a day like this, would stay home. So I wonder why you kids are hiking.”
Sometimes my father notices too much. Then he gets yellow lights shining in his eyes, asking you to tell the whole truth. That’s when I know to look at my feet.
“Oh,” I said, “we like hiking.”
But Gloria didn’t know any better. She looked into my father’s eyes. “Really,” she said, “this wasn’t a real hike. We came to see you.”
“Oh, I see!” my father said, looking pleased.
“Because we were bored,” Huey said.
My father jumped up so fast he tipped over his lemonade cup. “BORED!” my father yelled. “You were BORED?”
He picked up his cup and waved it in the air.
“And you think I don’t get BORED?” my father roared, sprinkling out a few last drops of lemonade from his cup. “You think I don’t get bored fixing cars when it’s hot enough that frogs wear shoes?”
“ ‘This is such an interesting world that nobody should ever be bored.’ That’s what you said,” I reminded him.
“Last week,” Huey added.
“Ummm,” my father said. He got quiet.
He rubbed his hand over his mouth, the way he does when he’s thinking.
“Why, of course,” my father said, “I remember th
at. And it’s the perfect, absolute truth. People absolutely SHOULD NOT get bored! However—” He paused. “It just happens that, sometimes, they do.”
My father rubbed a line in the dirt with his shoe. He was thinking so hard I could see his thoughts standing by the tree and sitting on all the fenders of the cars.
“You know, if you three would kindly help me some more, I could leave a half hour early, and we could drive down by the river.”
“We’ll help,” I said.
“Yes, and then we can look for frogs!” Huey said. So we stayed. We learned how to make a signal light blink. And afterward, on the way to the river, my dad bought us all ice cream cones. The ice cream did melt. Huey’s melted all down the front of his shirt. It took him ten paper napkins and the river to clean up.
After Huey’s shirt was clean, we took our shoes and socks off and went wading.
We looked for special rocks under the water—the ones that are beautiful until you take them out of the water, when they get dry and not so bright.
We found skipping stones and tried to see who could get the most skips from a stone.
We saw a school of minnows going as fast as they could to get away from us.
But we didn’t see any frogs.
“If you want to see frogs,” my father said, “you’ll have to walk down the bank a ways and look hard.”
So we decided to do that.
“Fine!” my father said. “But I’ll stay here. I think I’m ready for a little nap.”
“Naps are boring!” we said.
“Sometimes it’s nice to be bored,” my father said.
We left him with his eyes closed, sitting under a tree.
Huey saw the first frog. He almost stepped on it. It jumped into the water, and we ran after it.
Huey caught it and picked it up, and then I saw another one. I grabbed it.
It was slippery and strong and its body was cold, just like it wasn’t the middle of summer.
Then Gloria caught one too. The frogs wriggled in our hands, and we felt their hearts beating, Huey looked at their funny webbed feet.
“Their feet are good for swimming,” he said, “but Dad is wrong. They don’t wear shoes!”
“No way,” Gloria said. “They sure don’t wear shoes.”
“Let’s go tell him,” I said.
We threw our frogs back into the river. They made little trails swimming away from us. And then we went back to my father.
He was sitting under the tree with his eyes shut. It looked like he hadn’t moved an inch.
“We found frogs,” Huey said, “and we’ve got news for you. They don’t wear shoes!”
My father’s eyes opened. “They don’t?” he said. “Well, I can’t be right about everything. Dry your feet. Put your shoes on. It’s time to go.”
We all sat down to put on our shoes.
I pulled out a sock and put it on.
I stuck my foot into my shoe. My foot wouldn’t go in.
I picked up the shoe and looked inside.
“Oh no!” I yelled.
There were two little eyes inside my shoe, looking out at me. Huey and Gloria grabbed their socks. All our shoes had frogs in them, every one.
“What did I tell you,” my father said.
“You were right,” we said. “It’s a day when frogs wear shoes!”
We made a starting line on the ground and did broad jumps.
“I win!” I said.
“But not by much,” Gloria said. “Anyway, I jumped higher.”
“I doubt it,” I said.
“I bet you can’t jump this railing.” The railing went around the driveway in the park.
“I’ll bet,” Gloria said.
We both jumped the railing, but Gloria nicked it with her shoe.
“You touched it!” I said. “I win.”
“You win too much,” Gloria said.
She sat down on the grass and thought.
I sat down too. I wondered what was on her mind.
“Well,” Gloria said, “I guess you can win at ordinary things. But I can do something special.”
“Like what?” I said.
“Bet you I can move the sun,” she said.
“Bet you can’t!” I said.
“Bet I can,” Gloria said. “And if I win, you have to pay my way to a movie.”
“If you lose,” I said, “you pay my way. And you’re going to lose, because nobody can move the sun.”
“Maybe you can’t,” Gloria said. “I can.”
“Impossible!” I said.
“Well—suppose. Suppose I make you see the sunset in your bedroom window? If I can do that, do you agree that I win?”
“Yes,” I said. “But it’s impossible. I have an east window; I see the sun rise. But the sun sets in the west, on the other side of the house. There’s no way the sunset can get to my window.”
“Ummm,” Gloria said.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked. “Thinking how you’re going to lose?”
“Not at all,” Gloria said. “I’m thinking about what movie I want to see.”
“When are you going to make your miracle?” I asked.
Gloria looked at the sky. There were hardly any clouds.
“Today will be just fine,” she said. “Here’s what you have to do.…”
It was seven o’clock at night. I was in my room. I had done what Gloria asked. I had pulled the telephone into my bedroom on its long cord.
It was halfway dark in my bedroom. No way the sun was coming back.
The phone rang. I picked it up.
“Hello, Gloria,” I said. “The phone isn’t the sun.”
“Look out your window,” Gloria said.
“I don’t see anything unusual,” I said.
“O.K.,” Gloria said. “Now watch your wall, the one across from the window.”
I watched. A big circle of yellow light was moving across the wall. It floated higher. Then it zigzagged across the ceiling. Then it floated back down the wall again. It looked just like the sun does coming in the window in the morning. Except the morning sun doesn’t dance on the ceiling.
I spoke into the phone. I had to admit—“It looks like the sun!”
Gloria’s voice sounded far away. “It is the sun. Now look out your window again,” she said. “Look at my house.”
From the second floor of our house we can see over lots of garages and back yards to the top floor of Gloria’s house.
“See my house?” Gloria asked.
“Yes.”
“See my window?”
“Yes.”
“Look hard!” Gloria said.
And then I saw a person leaning out Gloria’s window. It was Gloria. And I saw what she had in her hands—a mirror big enough to move the sun.
“Gloria! You’re reflecting the sun into my house!” I said. “You’re sending signals!”
It was a wonderful invention! I didn’t know exactly what it was good for, but it seemed like it must be good for something.
“Of course!” Gloria said. “I’ve got to stop now.”
The sun went away. Her voice went away. I guessed her arms were getting tired from holding that big mirror out the window.
Then I heard her voice on the phone again.
“Did I do it, or didn’t I?” she asked.
“Do what?” I answered. I was so excited about the signaling invention I had forgotten about the bet.
“Move the sun!” Gloria said.
“Yes,” I said, “you did it. You win.”
“Ummm,” Gloria said. Her voice was full of satisfaction.
I knew what she was thinking about—what movie she wanted to see.
And I was thinking how I was going to have to do something I never want to do—at least for years and years and years: pay a girl’s way to a movie.
I would like to be like Smokey the Bear. I would like to be the person who sees the little spark that starts trouble and puts it out, like a forest fi
re, right at the beginning.
The trouble is, I don’t see the little sparks. That’s my trouble.
And I have one other trouble: great ideas.
I was in the back yard with Gloria and Huey. There are two new things in our back yard. One is a swing that is the best in town. My dad used a ladder to hang it in a great big tree.
When I sit in this swing and look straight up, it’s like looking to the roof of the world. And when we swing in our swing, we go high and wide—high as the roof of our garage, wide enough so the ropes bend where your hands hold them, and you wonder if you’ll somersault by accident.
The other new thing is a sandpile that’s as high as a little mountain. Gloria and I build mining towns and rivers and bridges and roads there. We pretend we’re digging for gold on the planet Arcturus.
Everything used to be peaceful. We swung a lot. We made a lot of towns in the sandpile. But then one day I got a great idea.
I was swinging. Huey and Gloria were standing by the tree.
I could see the sandpile almost under me. I checked to make sure there were no trucks in it.
Then I pushed off from the swing. It was like flying. There was a minute when I was sitting still in the air. Then it was like parachuting.
I landed in the sandpile. I broke three mines, one road, a bridge, a barbershop, a jail and a bank. But I was fine. I figured we could build the mining town over again.
“All right!” Gloria said. She got in the swing. In a minute she flew too, just like me.
“Your turn, Huey!” I said.
“O.K.,” Huey said. He didn’t sound very excited.
Huey got in the swing. Very slowly he started to go higher.
“Hurry up, Huey!” Gloria said.
“Just a minute,” Huey said. He started to slow down.
“What do you mean, ‘just a minute’?” I said. I wanted my next turn.
“Just a minute, I can’t do it until I put on my baseball cap,” Huey said. He got out of the swing and got his cap from the porch.
“Come on, Huey!” Gloria said.
He got back in the swing and started higher.
“Higher, Huey!” I shouted.
