Odds Are Good by Bruce Coville Read Free Book Online

at the edge of his grave and stared into it with longing. At last the time had come to discover what came next, the secrets and surprises he had denied himself for three long years.
    Tenderly he placed his head in the grave. Then crawling in beside it, he laid himself down and died.

Clean as a Whistle
    Jamie Carhart was, quite possibly, the messiest kid in Minnesota. The messiest kid in her town, no doubt. The county? She pretty well had that sewed up, too. And her mother was convinced that, were there a statewide competition, Jamie would easily be in the top ten, and might, indeed, take first place.
    Not that Mrs. Carhart was amused by this fact.
    â€œThis room is a sty!” she would say at least once a day, standing in the doorway of Jamie’s room and sighing. Then she would poke her foot at the mess that threatened to creep out into the rest of the house, sigh again as if the whole thing was far too much for her to cope with, and wander off.
    So it was a shock for Jamie to come home from school on the afternoon of April 17 and find her room totally, perfectly, absolutely neat, clean, and tidy.
    â€œAaaaaah!” she cried, standing in her doorway. “Aaaaaah! What happened? Who did this?”
    Jamie didn’t really expect an answer. Her parents both worked and wouldn’t be home for another two hours.
    For a horrible moment she wondered if her grandmother had come to visit. Gramma Hattie was perfectly capable of sneaking into a kid’s room and cleaning it while that kid wasn’t looking. Heaven alone knew where
she
might have put things. Even Jamie’s mother found Gramma Hattie hard to cope with.
    But Gramma Hattie lived in Utah (which in Jamie’s opinion was a good place for her), and now that Jamie thought of it, she was off on a trip to Europe. Besides, if she had done this, she would have pounced by now, crowing at her victory over disorder.
    So it wasn’t her.
    Jamie hesitated, wondering if she dared go in.
    â€œAnyone here?” she asked timidly.
    No answer.
    â€œAnyone?”
    Silence, though she did notice that the cat was on her bed. This did not please her. Actually, she always longed to have the cat in her room. But Mr. Bumpo normally refused to come through her door. Jamie’s mother claimed this was because the cat was too neat and couldn’t stand the mess. Jamie denied this, usually quite angrily. So she wasn’t amused to find Mr. Bumpo here now that the room was so clean; his gently purring presence seemed to confirm her mother’s horrible theory.
    Jamie looked around nervously as she entered the room. After a moment she dropped her books on her bed. She waited, half expecting someone to come dashing in and pick them up.
    â€œWhat is going on here?” she asked the cat, scratching its orange-and-black head.
    Mr. Bumpo closed his eyes and purred louder.
    Â 
    When Mrs. Carhart arrived home and came up to say hello to Jamie, she grabbed the edges of the doorway and staggered as if she had been hit between the eyes with a two-by-four.
    â€œWhat,” she asked in astonishment, “got into you?”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” asked Jamie sourly. She was sitting at her desk, working on a small clay project. She had generated a minor mess with the work, and managed to create a tad of clutter here and there. But overall the room was still so clean as to be unrecognizable.
    â€œI mean this room,” said her mother. She squeezed her eyes shut then opened them again, as if to make sure that she wasn’t hallucinating. “It’s so . . . so . . .
tidy!”
    Jamie looked at her suspiciously. “Didn’t you hire someone to come in here and clean it?” she asked. She was still fairly angry about the invasion of her privacy (and not about to admit that she was delighted to find her clay-working tools, which had been missing for some six months now).
    Her mother snorted. “The day we can afford