Umbrella Summer by Lisa Graff Read Free Book Online Page A

laughing at me or if she was just an eye-lighting-up kind of person.
    â€œWhat kinds do you have?” she asked.
    â€œJust this box of Coconut Babies.” I held it out for her to inspect. “It’s the last one left.” I was hoping Mrs. Finch wouldn’t look at it too close before she went for her checkbook, because one of the corners was seriously dented. Rebecca and I had found it in the very back of my kitchen cupboard, and I had a feeling thatit might be older than the president. Which wasn’t too surprising, really, because Coconut Babies tasted like the inside of a shoe and no one ever wanted to eat them.
    â€œWell, coconut isn’t my favorite,” Mrs. Finch said. “But I do like to support the Sunbirds.” She held her hand out for the box then, so I gave it to her.
    â€œIt’s five dollars,” I said.
    All of a sudden Mrs. Finch made a noise that sounded a lot like a snort. She looked up from the cookie box with a smile on her face that reminded me of a hot water bottle, warm from the inside. She held up the Coconut Babies and pointed to a date on the side. “Have you been selling all your customers expired goods, dear?”
    â€œUm…,” I said. The cookie plan was obviously not working. My mind gears started up, trying to think of another way to distract Mrs. Finch so Rebecca could get inside her house. “Can I use your bathroom?” I said at last, leaning over to see past Mrs. Finch.
    She laughed. “Spying on the new neighbor, are we?”
    â€œWhat? No.” I stood up straight. “I just have to pee.”
    â€œAh. So why does your friend need the binoculars?”
    I whirled around. Rebecca had half her whole body poked out from behind the tree, my dad’s binoculars held up to her face.
    â€œWhat is it?” Rebecca shouted at me. “What’s going on?”
    â€œWhistle!” I hollered back at her. “Whistle! Whistle! Whistle!” And I bolted down the steps and down the lawn, all the way across the street, Rebecca right beside me. I lost the box of Coconut Babies somewhere near the oak tree.
    Once we were back safe inside my house with the door slammed shut tight, Rebecca and I hid beneath the living-room window and took turns looking at Mrs. Finch’s house through my dad’s binoculars. Mrs. Finch was still standing on her porch, chuckling.
    â€œShe thinks we’re crazy,” Rebecca said, handing me the binoculars for good and scooching down underneath the window, her back to the wall. “No way we’re going to get inside there now.”
    â€œYeah,” I said, and I knew she was right. I peered through the binoculars again at my new nonspooky neighbor. “At least she doesn’t have laryngitis, though.”
    Rebecca folded her arms across her chest. “Ghosts don’t have laryngitis either,” she said. And I had to admit she was right about that one.

seven
    Rebecca stayed at my house the rest of the afternoon, the two of us trying to think up new plans to get into the haunted house, but we couldn’t come up with anything.
    â€œWhat if we just keep looking in the windows?” I said for the four hundredth time. “Sooner or later she’s going to forget to shut the blinds, and then we’ll be able to see inside.”
    Rebecca shook her head so hard, her braids smacked into the sides of her face. “No way,” she said. “You had a really great idea, about going inside. I don’t want to just look . I want to be in there.” She gnawed on her braid for a while, and then I guess she must’ve thought of something good, because all at once she spit the braid right out. “How about a human catapult?” she said.
    â€œNo way,” I told her. “You could get a bone fracture.” You’d think she would’ve known that, with her dad being a doctor and everything.
    Around four o’clock Rebecca’s mom