Switcharound by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online

be cooked for dinner that night—Caroline removed it from the refrigerator and flushed it all down the toilet. One stalk at a time. It took twenty flushes, and at the end of it the toilet sounded totally exhausted, as if
it
hated asparagus, too.
    She had never confessed, either. With a perfectly wide-eyed, honest look, she had told her mother that a burglar had apparently broken into the apartment and stolen the asparagus.
    That was a pretty horrible thing to do, Caroline thought, lying in her bed in Des Moines.
    Then she remembered something more recent and worse than the asparagus. Just this past spring, when her mother had been dating the professor from Columbia who lived upstairs, Caroline and J.P. had decided that he was a murderer, and they were going to have him put in jail. They had broken into his apartment, looking for evidence, and—
    Well. That was almost too horrible to think about.
    But this, she realized, tossing restlessly in her bed, was worse. And she was going to do it. She was going to do it soon.

    In the next room, in the top bunk, with Poochie below him snoring a little, J.P. also stared at the ceiling. He was really mad at Caroline because she wouldn't tell him her revenge. But he could understand why. Because now that he had dreamed up one, too, he realized that some things are just too horrible to tell.
    Whatever Caroline had thought up, J.P. mused, his was worse. He was quite sure. His was unspeakably horrible.

    One thing about summer in Des Moines, Caroline thought as she watched baseball practice the next morning: the weather's always good. Her shirt was sticking to her in the heat, and she wished that she had a bonnet, the way the twins did, to shade her eyes.
    "Catch it, Pooch! Catch it!" Caroline yelled from where she stood with the baby carriage, at the edge of the ball field.
    Poochie had both hands, the left one with a huge baseball glove on it, up in the air. The ball came sailing toward him. It wasn't a fast ball. It was a slow, lazy fly ball that had been hit by Matthew Birnbaum, the only kid on the Tater Chips team who could hit.
    Poochie squinted in the sun, ducked as the ball came closer, and reached up awkwardly. The ball fell between his outstretched arms to the ground and rolled toward second base. The second baseman, Christopher McGowan, dived for it, tripped on an untied shoelace, and fell. He burst into tears and rubbed his scraped chin.
    The ball rolled a little farther and came to rest near the pitcher's mound. J.P. picked it up.
    "That's enough batting practice, I guess," he called in a resigned voice. He took his notebook out of his back pocket. "Okay, let's see how we did today. Gather around."
    The twelve Tater Chips came to stand in a circle around their coach. Caroline pushed the baby carriage across the field and got closer so she could hear what he was saying to them.
    "How many people got a hit today?" J.P. asked, with his pencil ready to write it down. Matthew Birnbaum raised his hand. "I got ten hits," he called.
    "I sort of got a hit," said the little bucktoothed boy named Eric.
    "Anybody else?" asked J.P. Ten ballplayers shook their heads miserably.
    "How about catches?" J.P. asked. "Who caught a fly ball today?"
    "Mel Me! Me!" All the team members raised their hands eagerly.
    "It doesn't count if you
dropped
it," J.P. pointed out.
    All of the hands went down. Eric, the little boy who looked like a beaver, raised his hand again, tentatively. J.P. looked at him suspiciously. "Eric?" he said. "I don't remember you catching a fly ball today."
    Eric nodded vigorously. "Yeah, I was out there by third base, remember? And I caught it barehanded ! You saw me!"
    J.P. stared at him. "But, Eric, that was a ball that you threw into the air yourself. Then you caught it when it came back down."
    Eric nodded again. "Yeah! Right! I caught it!"
    "Poophead Eric! Poophead Eric!" yelled another boy. "You can't catch!"
    "Quiet!" J.P. bellowed. He made a check mark in his