All About Sam by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online

line, one that had candy bars and things. Just to look.
    An old man was there, buying a lot of frozen dinners and toilet paper. He didn't even glance down at Sam. If he had, Sam would have said "Excuse me."
    Sam wiggled past the old man and stood in front of the rows of candies. There were all kinds: Hershey bars, gumdrops, chewing gum, licorice. Milk Duds and Chuckles and Baby Ruths and M & M's.
    Sam wanted one very badly. It didn't even matter which one.
    He looked over at his mother. Her shopping cart was still half full. She was lifting a bag of oranges to the counter. She wasn't watching Sam at all.
    He looked up at the old man. The old man had his wallet in his hands and was counting out dollar bills. He wasn't noticing Sam at all.
    The lady in the pink smock was putting the old man's frozen dinners into a bag. She didn't even know Sam was there.
    Very quietly Sam reached up and took a bright red giant-sized package of Dentyne gum.
    Very quietly he put it into his pocket.
    He looked around. No one had seen him do it. No one at all.
    Quickly Sam scurried back to the No Candy line and stood beside his mother.
    "I'm just standing here," he said to her in a loud voice. "I'm not being naughty or anything. I'm not doing anything at all."
    She looked down and smiled. "Good," she said. "I'm almost through."
    When his mother had paid for the groceries, the lady in the pink smock looked down and said "Have a good day" to Sam.
    Sam didn't say anything. He reached for his mother's hand.
    He
had
been having a good day. He had had a good morning in nursery school, playing with Adam. He had gone down the giraffe slide headfirst. Nobody had shoved him in line. Nicky, who usually bit everybody, had been absent. He hadn't spilled his juice. He knew all the words to the "Eensy-Weensy Spider" song. He had been the one chosen to put the gray cloudy face on the big calendar today. He had successfully zippered his lips at Quiet Time.
    He had had a
very
good day coming home from nursery school in the carpool car. They had had a flat tire. Flat tires were among Sam's very favorite things. And this was an especially good flat tire, because there were seven kids in the car-pool station wagon, and four of them started to cry—not Sam, of course. The carpool driver, Skipper's mom, got very flustered and kept telling the kids to zipper their lips, but none of them did.
    Sam tried to tell Skipper's mom how to change a flat tire, but she didn't seem to want to listen.
    Finally a
police
car had stopped, and a policeman had changed the tire. He made all the kids get out of the station wagon first. He had let Sam squat down very close and watch.
    So Sam had had a very good day on the way home from school.
    And he had still been having a good day at lunch time, at home. Mom had taken his painting of a rainbow and hung it on the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a strawberry. He and Mom had had hot dogs.
Peter and the Wolf
was on the radio, and they had listened to it all the way through.
    And he had had a good day at the supermarket, pointing at things and helping his mom choose vegetables. She hadn't put broccoli in the shopping cart, only carrots and string beans, Sam's favorites.
    But now, suddenly, he wasn't having a good day anymore.
    His good day had ended, Sam realized, when he took the bright red giant-sized pack of Dentyne gum and put it into his pocket.
    "You're being very quiet, Sam," his mom said on the way home from the store. "Are you tired?"
    "No," Sam said in a small voice.
    "Is something wrong?" Mom asked.
    Sam reached into his pocket and very quietly felt the package of gum. "I'm not having a very good day," he told his mom.
    "Oh? Why not?"
    A tear slid down Sam's cheek. He pulled his hand, in a fist with the gum inside, out of his pocket. He looked at it and felt all choky.
    "Sweetie? What's the matter?" his mom asked.
    It was because she said "sweetie." That was the worst. Lots of kids at school cried for dumb reasons: because