The Day of the Iguana by Henry Winkler Read Free Book Online

breakfast, and then loaded into the minivan for the ride back to the city.
    Let me tell you about the ride home. First, I want you to stop reading and just listen. Do you hear anything? Well, neither did I. Our car on the ride home was about as quiet as a metal box covered in cement and buried way under the ocean floor halfway to China.
    What I’m trying to say is that Frankie didn’t say one word to me. Zilch. Zip. Nada.
    He gave me the Big Freeze, and boy, was I cold.

CHAPTER 12
    AFTER WE GOT HOME, Frankie went up to his apartment without saying so much as “I’ll meet you later in the clubhouse.” I’m sure Ashley was feeling caught in the middle of our fight, because she tried to be cheerful and make us laugh. It didn’t work, though. You couldn’t have made Frankie Townsend laugh if you had tickled him under the arms with a twenty-foot feather. Ashley even offered to bring blueberry muffins for our walk to school the next morning, but Frankie just shrugged and said, “Thanks, Ash, but I don’t think I’ll be hungry.”
    Robert asked if he could go with Emily and my father to pick up Katherine from the pet store. He said he was looking forward to a chance to spend some quality time with our iguana. What kind of kid wants to spend time with an iguana? If you think about it, what kind of kid wants to spend time with my sister?
    I was pretty stressed from all that happened, and was hoping I could just kick back and lie on the couch, which is one of my favorite things to do. So after I picked up Cheerio from Mrs. Fink’s apartment, I flopped down on the couch and put him on my stomach for a big belly scratch. That is one of his favorite things to do. It’s so cute the way he looks up at you and yips like a little puppy. His other favorite thing is licking the bricks on the fireplace. Don’t ask me why he does that; I told you he was slightly nuts.
    I hadn’t even been flopped on the couch for two minutes when my mom unflopped me.
    â€œUp and at’em,” she said, holding out her hand to pull me up.
    â€œMom, I just got comfortable.”
    â€œWell, you can be comfortable later, because there’s a little thing called your science project waiting for you. Your topic is due tomorrow, and you promised ...”
    â€œI know, I know,” I said. She was right. I had given her my word I’d pick the topic over the weekend. I gave my word to Frankie, too, and where had that gotten me?
    I went into my room, sat at my desk, and looked at the chart on the wall.
    â€œSCIENCE PROJECT,” it said in the space for Monday. I stared at the square. Nothing happened. Then I swiveled in my chair and looked at the other wall. I stared at that for a while. There were no ideas there, either. Only white space. Empty white space.
    My brain often doesn’t work when I want it to, but now it was definitely on snooze. I knew what the problem was. I was really worried about what happened with Frankie.
    Maybe you know the feeling. You’ve got to think of a topic for your science project, which is due the next day. But you’re in a humungous fight with your best friend and you absolutely positively cannot concentrate. I have trouble concentrating when I’m not in a fight with anyone, when everything is perfect. It takes a lot of work to focus my brain. But when I have something really big on my mind, it’s hopeless.
    I stared at the wall some more. The only science project that occurred to me was how to send an electro-wave from my brain to Frankie’s to make him forget that he was mad at me.
    I sat there. It seemed like hours went by. I heard my dad and Emily come home. I heard my mom’s footsteps in the hall. She was on patrol, circling around to see that I was doing my work. If she was any closer to my bedroom door, she would have been inside. Occasionally, she was, or at least parts of her were. Like her mouth.
    â€œHow’s it