A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban Read Free Book Online Page B

school.
    6. Practice "Forever in Blue Jeans."
    7. Eat dinner.
    8. Do homework.
    9. Practice "Forever in Blue Jeans."
    10. Go to bed.
    11. Repeat and repeat and repeat.

Dinner
    Even though Mom is home, Wheeler is staying for spaghetti, so I set an extra place at the dinner table.
    "Was that your Perform-A-Palooza piece you were playing when I came in?" Mom asks.
    "Perform-O-Rama," I say. "Uh-huh."
    "And when's the Perform-O-Rama?"
    "In two weeks," I say. "The day after my birthday. You are still taking me, right?"
    Mom nods, filling in the calendar she keeps in her head. I wonder if she's adding my birthday to the calendar, too, or if it was already there alongside her meetings and deadlines and presentations.
    Then she looks at Wheeler. "And you're the kid who eats my dinner when I'm not here?"
    Wheeler nods.
    "I couldn't let him leave," says Dad. "He's co-creator of the Amazing Maple Tart, debuting tonight at Chez Us."
    "Debuting?" Mom asks. "Half of it is already eaten."
    "We gave some to Hugh," says Wheeler.
    "And we had to test it," says Dad.
    The Amazing Maple Tart is amazing. I catch Mom sneaking a taste.
    "This is good," she says. "I may have to double your Living Room University budget if this is the return we get on our investment."
    Dad grins.
    "You know," says Wheeler, "we should sell this."
    "There 's only half left, Wheeler," says Dad. "And it's lopsided. Who's going to buy half of a tart?"
    "I mean whole ones," says Wheeler. "We can bake them and sell them to restaurants and grocery stores." Wheeler waves a fork in the air. "Oh! And to the snack bar at Danny's Chomp and Bowl! Bowlers will pay big bucks for something that tastes like food. And we can get our own delivery van with our company name painted on the side—maybe Tarts 'R' Us or Kings of Tarts or something—and we'll be so famous that little kids will see our van and come running out of their houses like we 're in the ice cream truck and we can sell them slices for a quarter and if they don't have a quarter we can sometimes just give them a slice because we'll be millionaires."
    I've never seen Wheeler like this before, all sparkly-eyed and grinning.
    "Listen to him!" Mom laughs. "All worked up about a crazy dream."
    "What 's so crazy about it?" I say, and then, of course, I know.
    Wheeler's just a kid. He can't drive all over Eastside. He can't sell things to strangers. He can't talk tarts with restaurant owners and snack bar people.
    And neither can my dad.

Lunch
    The Fireside Scouts' month of cookie selling is up and there are empty seats in the lunchroom again, but when I go to sit in one, Wheeler Diggs calls me to his table.
    "Sit here, Zsa Zsa," he says.
    And I do. I sit there and then Colton and Henry and Danny start asking if I brought any cookies and I tell them no, but I've got a shoe box full of mini éclairs.
    "What are those?" says Wheeler.
    What are those? Wheeler is asking what are those?
He should know; he made them,
I think, and when I start to tell him so, I see this look in his eyes. This please-don't-tell-these-guys-I-wear-an-apron-at-your-house-every-afternoon look.
    So instead I open the shoe box and let everybody find out about éclairs for themselves. Which they do.
    "Thank you," says Colton. He says it all polite and with a little smile. And he 's wearing a new shirt. And his hair is combed. Did I miss something? Is it picture day?
    No, everybody else is wearing the same scraggedy clothes they always do.
    "Yeah," says Henry. Then he swallows a big gulp of air so he can burp out a proper thank-you for me.
    "And Earth's temperature rises five degrees," says Wheeler.
    "Huh?" says Henry.
    "Didn't you read your science book, slob?" asks Wheeler. We're studying global warming. Our science book says that cows burp methane gas and scientists think that's making a gas blanket around the world and heating everything up. Which is what Wheeler tells Henry.
    "You're saying I burp like a cow?" says Henry.
    "Yeah," says