One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street by Joanne Rocklin Read Free Book Online Page A

tree, and next thing you knew we heard a loud
crunch
. That mule ate Shirley’s leg! Gertrude screamed, but I was frozen to the spot, speechless. Malcolm munched his way through another leg, then the torso, then the arms. Gertrude kicked Shirley’s head to safety, and threw herself on top of it, sobbing her valiant heart out.
    â€œMalcolm brayed as if he were asking
Who did you say was the boss?
Then he washed down all that wood and glue with an orange for dessert.
    â€œNow Gertrude gave
me
the evil eye. ‘It’s all your fault, Ethel!’ she cried. ‘If you’d only let me be Prince Valiant in the first place! Your fault! Your fault!’
    â€œShe didn’t talk to me for a few days. I still had to helpher with her chores, though. I missed being friends. One afternoon, I apologized, even though it was Malcolm’s fault, too. And Gertrude’s, for riding Malcolm so hard. I even gave her Patsy, one of my favorite dolls, cleaner than Shirley used to be.
    â€œâ€˜I’m really too old for a doll,’ Gertrude said, but she took Patsy anyway.
    â€œThen we lovingly placed Shirley, or Shirley’s head, in a cookie tin, and gave her the dignified funeral she deserved.”
    Ms. Snoops took a sip of her orange-raspberry zinger tea. “And guess what? Gertrude’s wish eventually came true!”
    â€œShe became an actress?” Ali asked.
    â€œWell, no. But one sunny morning that rattletrap of a car came clattering up Orange Street. Her parents had found better jobs working in a shipyard, and they’d come to pick her up and take her Somewhere Else, just like she’d wished. And she never let anyone call her Gertie, ever again.” Ms. Snoops sighed. “Oh, that girl was a pain! Fun, though, and I grew to love her. Our friendship has been infrangible.”
    Leandra was fun, too, when she wasn’t being a pain. Ali had to admit she even liked the Girls With Long Hair Club,except for its focus on long hair. “What’s infrangible?” Ali asked.
    â€œGo look it up.” Ms. Snoops pointed to her giant dictionary across the room. “
Infrangible
is an important word to know, especially where friendship is concerned. And remember, as hard as we try, and it’s so very, very important to try, you can’t know everything that’s going on behind people’s front doors, or in their hearts and minds.”
    â€œI wish we could,” said Ali.

t was so hot on Orange Street that afternoon, you could practically see steam rising up from the sidewalks. Even if your side of the street had the afternoon shade, as Leandra’s did, that wasn’t really an advantage, temperature-wise. It was a good idea to stay inside for a while until the day cooled down.
    That was fine with Leandra. All she felt like doing, really, was sitting around and complaining in her grandparents’ living room. Her grandparents, Big Mom and Little Pop (301 ½ Orange Street), lived in a one-room apartment with a bathroom, built on top of the garage attached to Leandra’s house.
    Big Mom and Little Pop had made the apartment cozy and cheerful. The walls of the sleeping section were painted Sea Breezy Blue and the living room and eating section Jasmine Pink and the cooking section was painted Hot Banana. The bathroom was Sail Away Green. Every chair had a plump pillow for the crook of your back and a footstool to put your feet on. Their home was always the right temperature for sitting around and complaining; toasty warm on chilly days, or deliciously cool in summer because of a giant, squeaky fan on the ceiling. In a corner was a big golden birdcage with a sign that said 301 1/16 orange street, inside of which was an old African Grey parrot named Nelson, who could talk. (He also sang “All You Need Is Love” every evening as the sun went down.)
    Big Mom was tall, with soft flesh on her arms that wriggled like pudding. Little Pop was short in