Read The Sugar Mountain Snow Ball Online
Authors: Elizabeth Atkinson
The Sugar Mountain Snow Ball
Other middle grade fiction from Islandport Press:
Cooper and Packrat:
Mystery on Pine Lake
and
Mystery of the Eagle's Nest
by Tamra Wight
Uncertain Glory
by Lea Wait
The Five Stones Trilogy:
The Fog of Forgetting
and
Chantarelle
by G. A. Morgan
Azalea, Unschooled
by Liza Kleinman
Mercy: The Last New England Vampire
by Sarah L. Thomson
Islandport Press
PO Box 10
247 Portland Street
Yarmouth, ME 04096
Copyright © 2015 by Elizabeth Atkinson
All Rights Reserved. Published in the United States by Islandport Press. International copyright reserved in all countries. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-939017-72-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014959685
Printed in the USA by Bookmasters.
For Lisa Myers, wherever you may be.
Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.
âMadeleine L'Engle,
A Wrinkle in Time
Contents
1
The morning I couldn't find my extra-thick striped socks turned out to be the day that changed my life.
Eleanor would say it was
serendipitous
that I couldn't find my socks, one of the huge words she likes to use. Because if I had found my socks, we never would have spent the afternoon together and discovered Madame Magnifique's sparkling poster on the community bulletin board at the used books store.
But since I spent so much time searching for my socks, I was late for school. And when you're late for school more than twice in the same month, the assistant vice principal, Mr. Tankhorn, makes you stay after for detention. So that morning happened to be my third tardy in December, even though the month had barely begun.
“See you in the cafeteria at two forty-five sharp, Ms. LaRue,” said Mr. Tankhorn as I rushed through the old wooden doors of Paris Middle School seconds after the last bell.
“I apologize for being a teensy bit late again, Mr. T,” I said, stomping snow off my red boots, “but I really can't stay after today. I have very important plans to”âI had to come up with something
wicked smart this time, something Eleanor would sayâ“plans to
research
the changing cloud
formations
due to acid
reflux
and, you know, all the other
acids
and
refluxes
.”
That sounded pretty good to me.
“Nice try, Ruby.”
Mr. Tankhorn is the sort of person who talks stuffy, like he has wads of tissues jammed up his nose.
“The truth is, young lady,” he continued, “you can go home any day of the week and text or play online games or whatever it is you kids do on the computer these days until your eyes pop out of your exploding heads. But if you cannot get to school on time, you're going to spend the afternoon with me in the cafeteria. They won't put up with these shenanigans in high school!”
The truth?
Nobody in the whole school knew the truth about me, except Eleanor. I mean, they knew I was friendly, kinda short, a little plus-sized, and in the sixth grade . . . but they didn't know I did pretty much nothing after school, because I had to babysit my four-year-old twin brothers, Charlie and Henry, practically every day, since both of my parents seemed to work nonstop lately. And all the boys and I ever did was watch television game shows, sprawled across the couch, munching unsold cookies my stepmother, Mim, brought home from the café where she worked double shifts.
Our houseâwhich is the same one my dad grew up inâis down a long, curvy driveway in a sunny clearing in the woods with a giant porch across the front of it, but it's really old and tired-looking, with the blue paint peeling off in lots of spots. I don't have my own cell phone or computer, because my parents think I'm still too young.
Plus they're always cutting corners, trying to save money. We don't even have cable or a dish, just some antenna thing that barely works. Less than twelve television channels come in, and some are smushy.
“Okay, Mr. T. See you in the cafeteria.”
A couple of hours later I was standing in line with Eleanor in gym class. It was our least-favorite class, but it was the only one we had together since we were on different tracks, with Eleanor falling into the brainiac track and me in the regular track. Luckily we got to see each other at lunch too.
I bent over and whispered in her ear.
“Can I use your phone later? I know it's for emergencies, but I promise I'll be quick.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes like she didn't believe me.
“Why?” she asked.
“I need to call the twins' babysitter to let her know I'll be late picking them up.”
We were standing in line because that week we had to complete the President's Challenge. We're forced to do this by the government every yearâan activity that, for Eleanor and me, is just another form of public embarrassment. I tend to wheeze, which comes on with a whiff of the old, moldy gym, so I really don't have the strength to do even one pull-up. And Eleanor is wicked skinny, which means she is basically weak.
So when it was our turn we pretended to try extra hard, then clutched our wrists or elbows and cried,
Ouch!
Like always, it worked.
The gym teacher, Ms. Duncan, told us to grab ice packs and sit down on the bottom bleacher.
“Tardy again, Ruby?” whispered Eleanor as she tied her long black hair into a ponytail.
“I can't help it. All this stuff, like my extra-thick striped socks, seems to vanish into thin air. It's like our house is upside down. Pop has been on the road for three weeks now, and Mim's been leaving extra early in the morning to drop off the twins. Lately she's been working right up until supper, like ten-hour shiftsâeven on Saturdaysâand all we ever eat is take-out from the Panda House. I'm getting sick of fried wontons and egg rolls.”
“But why are your parents working so much?”
“I don't know; I guess we need the money. And also, Mim said she really wants to save up for an Aqua-Pedic aboveground pool next summer so we can float on rafts and sip pink drinks like we're in Jamaica, which would
obviously
be super fun,” I sighed. “But in the meantime, I miss Pop, plus nothing's getting done. Our house is practically falling apart.”
I don't want to give the wrong impression about Mim, because she would be considered the best stepmom in the entire world if she didn't have to work so many hours and do almost everything alone since my father drives freight trucks and sometimes leaves for weeks at a time. I even feel funny calling her my stepmother, since my actual mother died when I was born. Pop married Mim when I was only two years old.
Plus she has the best job, when you really think about it. Every day, Mim bakes twelve kinds of “Monster Chunk” cookies in the
Slope Side Café kitchen at the Sugar Mountain Ski Resort. After the cookies come out of the oven and cool down, she covers them in pretty plastic wrap and then seals them with this cute heart sticker that says
SUGAR MOUNTAIN HOMEMADE GOODIES
. The dough is Mim's super-secret recipe, and they're famous all over the East Coastâmore and more stores and restaurants keep ordering themâwhich is why she's always so busy.
But lately I'd noticed the house seemed to be getting messier and messier every day, and we could barely close any of the overstuffed cabinets and closets, plus all of us were really tired, not just Mim, to the point where the boys and I were dozing and snoring on the couch by four p.m., especially when our very favorite TV game show,
The Price Is Right
, was extra smushy and we couldn't even make out if the contestant had won or lost.
Eleanor slipped her cell phone into my hand when we were back in the locker room, changing into our regular clothes. My wrist and her elbow had both made amazing recoveries.
“Be really quick,” she said.
“Thanks,” I whispered, and wedged my head into my locker, because we aren't allowed to use cell phones during school hours.
“Hello, Mrs. Petite? It's Ruby LaRue.”
“You sound peculiar, dear. Is everything all right?”
“Well, not exactly. I have my head in a locker, but that's not why I'm calling. It turns out I have to stay after school today for . . . well . . . for a type of project, I guess you could say. So I'll pick up the twins a teensy bit later, if that's okay with you?”
“Oh, my. Again? Well, I suppose I'll have to take them along to the dentist,” she said in her pretty old-lady way of talking that makes her sound like she's reciting poetry instead of plain old words. “But don't you worry, dear. Come on by the house after four o'clock.”
Right then, Ms. Duncan blew the whistle, which meant we had to gather on the bleachers before going back to regular class and discuss what we had learned that day, like team building and cooperation and junk like that.