Georgia's Greatness by Lauren Baratz-Logsted Read Free Book Online

twitched her nose twice.

    In an instant, she was gone, leaving Greatorex suspended in thin air about six inches above the chair in which Georgia had been sitting with the cat in her lap. Then the cat leaped to the snowy floor. Three seconds later, Jackie felt a poke on her shoulder.
    "It's me," we heard Georgia say.
    Two seconds after that, Annie felt a tickle between her ribs.
    "That was me too," we heard Georgia say. "I thought you could use a good laugh."
    A full minute later, a can of pink frosting and a silver spoon came floating into the room; they landed on the table right in front of Rebecca.
    "I thought," we heard Georgia say, "a little pink frosting might improve your mood."
    And then, almost immediately, Georgia was with us again: her whole body and not just her voice.
    "How did you do all that?" Durinda asked, awed.
    "The double nose-twitch," Georgia said calmly, as though she'd been doing it her whole life. "It really does work, and it works both ways."
    Then Georgia found Greatorex under a chair and gave her a good scratch beneath the chin. "Thanks, Greatorex. I don't know if I could have figured it out without you. But please stop tormenting the other cats."
    "Hey," Rebecca said, "does anyone see what I see? Georgia must be just as crazy as Zinnia! She's talking to her cat as if she expects the cat to understand her."
    "Maybe she can," Georgia said with a shrug.
    "Oh, I'm worried," Petal said. "I am very worried now."
    "About what?" Jackie asked kindly.
    "What if Georgia makes herself disappear in the middle of the night?" Petal worried aloud. "What if she comes into my bedroom and starts pinching me in the dark and I can't see her? It will frighten me."
    "I promise I won't do that," Georgia said. It was as if she'd somehow grown older that afternoon. "A power is a great responsibility. I promise not to abuse mine." Then a gleam entered her eye. "But you never know. At the right time, in the right place, being able to make yourself disappear and then appear again could come in handy."
    Later that night, before going to bed, we remembered to check behind the loose stone in the wall in the drawing room. This time, the note there was the right note.
Dear Georgia,
Nice work... Finally! Five down, eleven to go.
    A half-hour afterward, even though we couldn't all see it, we were sure Georgia went to sleep with a smile on her face.

CHAPTER SIX

    It was one week later, so it was Monday again, the same day repeating itself being what happens when an entire week goes by.

    In the seven days that had passed since the last time it was Monday, Georgia had spent many hours practicing her new power. The rains hadn't completely stopped yet, and water did still trickle down from the sky. This meant that when Georgia went down to get the mail each day, invisible, we could see her umbrella bob its way down the hill and bob back up again with a stack of mail floating in the air below it. We all thought this looked very funny, but Annie put a stop to it.
    "What if the mailperson sees that mail floating with no body there to carry it?" Annie said. "It could give him a worse fright than the time Rebecca locked Rambunctious in the mailbox in order to see what mailperson and cat would do when mailperson opened box and cat leaped out at mailperson."
    She made a good point. Regarding the mailperson and the cat, as Mommy always said, "It's always funny until someone starts to cry."
    "You probably don't need me to remind you of this," Annie reminded Georgia before school that Monday, "but you have to be careful about when and where you practice your make-yourself-invisible trick. It wouldn't do to suddenly disappear in front of Mandy's eyes or to suddenly reappear in a spot where you're not supposed to be."
    All the way in on the bus, we worried that Annie's warnings were falling on deaf Georgia ears, but when we got to our classroom, the only person who had disappeared that was supposed to be there was the McG.
    Our regular teacher was