by Ted Staunton
“I AM NOT.”
Oh-oh. I turn. Aldeen has let go of her grandma. Her eyes are squinched. Her witchy hair is zapping out from her head and her noogie knuckles are poking out from each fist. Double oh-oh.
Then she says, “I’ll go on anything you do.”
I open my mouth to say “Yeah, right,” and my voice has gone all squeaky. I sound like a fuzzy bunny. “What one?”
“That one.” Aldeen doesn’t even look where she points.
“Asteroid Belt?” says Charlie.
“Whatever,” says Aldeen.
I swallow. It takes a long time. I squeak to Charlie, “Y-you coming?” I still sound like a fuzzy bunny.
The others shuffle a little. “I don’t think so. We just got off the other one.”
I get the tickets from Dad. He lifts his eyebrows, but he gives them to me.
We go join the lineup for the ride. Aldeen stares straight ahead. I watch the ride guy make sure everyone is tall enough to go on. I bend my knees. Aldeen glares at me and her noogie knuckle pops out again. I stand up straight. The ride guy lets us by. A seat stops in front of us. We get on. Another guy fastens us in. We don’t talk. There’s a hum and a jolt, and the ride
is on.
8
Asteroid Belted
I scream for every second of the whole ride. It lasts about two days — at least it feels as if it does. I can’t tell you much else about it, because I keep my eyes shut after the first time we drop, dangle face-down, and then rocket up backwards. All I can do is hang on as hard as I can to whatever I grab and keep screaming, even after my lips get smooshed together and my knees come out my nose.
I am still screaming when I finally feel everything slow down, but a tiny “Eeeeeeeee” is all I have left. I can’t hear me because someone else is still screaming too —“EEEEEEEEE” — but I can feel my scream in my teeth. They are clamped shut, but vibrating. Something hurts too.
I sneak one eye open. Whew, we are right side up, close to the ground. I look around. Aldeen still has her eyes shut tight. She is the one who’s still screaming too.
The ride stops. So does she. She looks at me. I look at her.
“Ow,” we both say.
Now we can see what hurts too. We are squished together in the centre of the seat, holding on to each other so tight our fingers have gone all white.
9
Keeping Your Beak Shut
Aldeen and I are almost in each other’s laps. One of my hands is clamped onto Aldeen’s arm. The other one won’t let go of the safety bar in front of me. My own arm feels as if Aldeen has squeezed right through it.
Slowly, we get untangled. My face feels hot; Aldeen’s is all red. We scooch over to our own sides. We don’t say anything and we don’t look at each other. Luckily, our car stopped at the back of the ride.
When it’s our turn to get off, everybody is waiting at the bottom of the steps and they are all talking at once.
“How was it?” asks Kaely.
“Yeah,”’ Mark calls. “Was it good?”
My legs are all wobbly. I think I can talk now without barfing but I don’t know what to say. I can’t say, I was so scared I shut my eyes the whole time and held on to Aldeen and screamed, because I’ll sound chicken. And I can’t lie and say, I liked it but Aldeen was so scared she shut her eyes the whole time and held on to me and screamed because then she will say I did too and probably pound me. And for sure I can’t say, We were so scared we shut our eyes the whole time and held on to each other and screamed, because that makes us both sound chicken — and even worse, smoochy — and Aldeen will probably double pound me.
Which means all I can do is … is … is …
I look at her. She looks back at me. Her mouth is pinched tight. I can’t tell if she’s mad or if she feels sick.
I say, “It was … really wild.”
I look at Aldeen again. She still doesn’t say anything, so I say, “But cool, though. It was cool.”
“Was it scary?” Paige asks.
“Well …”
Before I can think of something, Aldeen shrugs and says, “A little, but no biggie. For a ride, it didn’t stink.”
Her voice sounds kind of cracked but nobody notices. Instead, “Coo-ool,” they say. “Let’s go on!”
“Where’s the line?”
“Hey,” I say to Charlie. “Didn’t you already go on that one?”
“No way,” says Charlie. “Nobody ever goes on Asteroid Belt. It’s the scariest one here. You’re the first one to do it. You going to come on again?”
“Not right now,” I say. “We have to check out Aldeen’s picture.”
“Not my picture,” she says. “My prize.”
10
Perfect Prizes
All the prize stuff is in a big building at the end of the midway. Mom is still carrying my bunny from the game. Guys who go on Asteroid Belt don’t carry pink fuzzy bunnies. I wonder if Aldeen has really won a prize for her picture. Aldeen does do pretty good pictures. I was over at her house once and saw a bunch of them pinned up in her room.
The building is a hockey rink with no ice. It is full of things people have entered in the fair for prizes. There is no time to look at any of it because Aldeen zooms us along to find her picture in the art show.
Before we even get there, she’s yelling “TOLD YOU! I WON! I WON!”
Up ahead, one of the pictures has a red ribbon stuck on the corner. When we get up close, I see it’s a picture of a guy with this big jack-o’-lantern in a red wagon, only the guy is almost as round as the pumpkin and his face is kind of like the jack-o’-lantern one. The title says Perfect Pumpkin by Aldeen Hummel.
“Morgan,” my mom smiles, “I think that’s you!”
What? No way.
But Aldeen says, “Yeah. You can have it. I just want the ribbon.”
She starts to rip the picture down, but Grandma Flo says, “Aldy, you have to wait till the fair is over.”
I look some more at the picture. That’s me? My face gets hot again.
“Hey,” Dad says. “While we’re here, let’s look at some other things.”
So we do. Most of them are boring, like jars of jam, and knitting, and lawn chairs with happy faces woven into them. Some of them have ribbons on, too. There is one table with nothing but little plates of seeds on it. Why would you get a ribbon for seeds, I wonder. I like the weird vegetables, though. There is a carrot that looks like a zombie, with arms and legs, and a bunch of potatoes that look like people’s heads. The winner is a cucumber like a snake.
Then I see the table with the pumpkins. I point. “Is that where we would have brought my pumpkin?” I ask Dad.
“Yup,” he says.
I look at the pumpkins. At first, they look pretty perfect. Then I look closer. The huge one with the red ribbon is lopsided. The super-round one with the blue ribbon is too little. The white ribbon one has a flat bit. The others all have lumps and bumps somewhere; scratches or scuff marks. Not one of them is as perfect as mine was.
Behind me, Aldeen is saying “But I want my ribbon now.”
“Ixnay on that,” says Grandma Flo. “This way the whole world gets to see what a great picture you did.”
I sigh. Nobody is going to see what a great pumpkin I grew.
Dad says, “Say, look over here.”
Oh yessss. There are tables full of cakes and cookies and pies. I start to feel a little better.
“Hey,” Mom calls, “Check out this one.”
It’s a pie. A pumpkin pie. The red ribbon is on the card with it. The card says Best Father/Son Baking, then there is my name and Dad’s. It’s one of our pies.
“They turned out so well I thought we should enter one,” says Dad. “Looks like your pumpkin won a prize after all.”
>
I stare. Then I say, “Hey, there’s a piece missing.”
“They have to taste it to decide,” Dad explains.
“I haven’t even tasted it. Can we have some now? I’m hungry.”
“No,” says Mom, “We have to leave it so everyone can see what a good job you did. Let’s share some fries instead.”
“And how about another ride?” asks Grandma Flo.
“There are enough tickets for one more,” Dad says.
I know what’s coming:
“Bumper cars,” says Aldeen.
It sounds good to me.
More novels in the First Novels series!
Raffi’s For the Birds
Sylvain Meunier
Illustrated by Élisabeth
Eudes-Pascal
Translated by Sarah Cummins
Raffi McCaffrey’s medical condition makes it hard for him to get around.
One morning, while looking outside his window, he suddenly sees an injured bird. But what can Raffi do to save the bird?
Captain Lilly and the New Girl
Brenda Bellingham
Illustrated by Clarke MacDonald
Lilly helps to welcome a new team mate, from a different background, to the Wolves.
When Sara joins the team, there
is controversy over her headscarf. The Wolves band together and insist that if Sara can’t play with her hijab, they will not play at all.
Mia, Matt and the Pigs that Sing
Annie Langlois
Illustrated by Jimmy Beaulieu
Translated by Sarah Cummins
Each summer, twins Mia and Matt visit Uncle Orlando’s cottage and help him train animals for movies and TV shows.
Will twins Mia and Matt be able to get a group of pigs to sing for a concert or will the pigs live up to their stubborn nature?
Text Copyright © 2011, 2009 Ted Staunton
Illustrations Copyright © 2011, 2009 Bill Slavin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Formac Publishing Company Limited acknowledges the support of the Cultural Affairs Section, Nova Scotia Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada yhrough the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.
Cataloguing in Publication data is available from Library and Archives Canada
This digital edition first published in 2011 as 978-0-88780-182-2
Originally published in 2009 as 978-0-88780-847-4
Formac Publishing Company Limited
5502 Atlantic Street
Halifax, NS B3H 1G4
www.formac.ca
