The Life of Corinne P. : Chapter 2

Corinne was bored. She was sitting on the couch with her legs propped up against the armrests.
"I don't know what to do," she moaned to Jesse.
"Play trucks with me?" Jesse suggested. Since a few days ago, Jesse had been going through what Lora referred to as a "transportation phase." Cars, trucks, airplanes, boats, even his Transformer toys had started to fascinate him more than ever. When they saw a bus passing one day, he'd delightfully asked, "How does it work?" When the members of the family had failed to give an explanation, he'd stomped his foot in frustration.
"Sorry, Jesse. Not right now, " apologized Corinne. And really, she was sorry, even though she didn't like the game of trucks. Jesse would be sad. He'd always said that trucks was a two person game: "So we can race the trucks!"
"I have an idea," offered Lora, coming into the room holding a bowl full of blueberries in one hand and one of Jesse's Transformer toys in the other. "Jesse, you need to clean this up, " she said, addressing Jesse. "And Corinne, it would be a good opportunity for you to visit your friends."
Corinne groaned. Lora, though always insisting she'd visited her friends in her childhood, couldn't seem to understand that Samantha was in Australia, or Mia was in Mendocino, or Kiren was at summer camp.
"Mom, all my friends are away!" whined Corinne. "Why can't we go somewhere too?"
Suddenly Kenna appeared in the room, standing next to Corinne as if she was attending to Corinne. "I have an idea," she breathed in Corinne's ear, eyes glowing green. "At night, you'll see."

Missed the first in the series? Click here to read it.

The Life of Corinne P. : Chapter 1

Corinne Packel was in the living room of her house, trying to recruit more people for a game of Musical Chairs.
It was late afternoon. The morning had been filled with thunder and lightning, so no one dared to go outside. Now, even though it had stopped raining, her previous attempts to persuade her mom to go to the bowling alley had failed. Corinne sighed, and dragged over a chair: Both herself and her cousin, Nory, were playing already. Nory didn't seem to be helping, though: She was listening to Robin's music, coming from a laptop computer.
Since her mom had politely refused a minute before, Corinne began to work on her dad. "Can you play Musical Chairs with me?" she pleaded.
Andy, her dad, shrugged his shoulders.
"Pleeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaase?" Corinne begged. Her comment made beautiful harmony with the music.
Just then, Kenna, Nory's little sister, burst in, with Jesse, Corinne's little brother, trailing behind her. "Can we play?" Jesse asked.
Corinne sighed. "Kenna, get some more chairs."
Soon, a game of Musical Chairs was in progress. Robin's music played while Corinne, Jesse, Nory,
and Kenna walked around and around the set of chairs.
Robin's hand slid across the keyboard. The music stopped. Everyone scrambled for a seat. Corinne found that she had no trouble getting a seat. This round, Jesse was out...
Then Nory...
Until Kenna got out. It took a minute for Corinne to realize what had happened. Then she cheered, along with everyone else.

Excerpt

COMING SOON…
And then we saw it.
“It” was a piece of paper, folded in two like a card. The front displayed an old math worksheet. But the other side? I was curious to find out.
“Let’s read it,” Rhia said, bending down to pick it up. She read it, her eyes darting so quickly from left to right they appeared to be black slits in her face. Then she handed it to me.

I am hidden. Come to find me. Bring a long, sharp thing.
I will give you one clue:

Your Friend,

I recognized Shila’s handwriting almost instantly. But I also recognized the special symbol Shila had chosen about a year ago. I had chosen one too: . If I remember correctly, we made lots of stickers showing our symbols. Maybe the symbol on the letter was a sticker.
“Press the PRESS,” Rhia reminded me.
I did, and at once sound rose up from the letter. It sounded like a song I had heard in Dance, but with the words removed. “What’s the clue?” I asked Rhia.
“I don’t know. That’s a new song to me. What’s the name of the song?”
Suddenly, I knew it. “Rhia, go get the Award-Winning Pencil and come right back. Fast! “


--- Excerpt from “Baby School” by Nory Klop- Packel
Copyright 3/24/09
Note: Sorry about the blank spots. They include things that I cannot type on a computer.

Leaf Explorations: The Sequel to Leaf Days

That time when, before going to bed, Leaf had sneaked into her room and whispered,"Tomorrow we will be adventurers," before shutting the door, was one of the most puzzling times of Maya's life.
It was a Friday night, and Maya was exhausted from school. She fell asleep right away, not giving much thought to what Leaf had said.
The next morning they packed. Along with clothes and a few packets of food, they brought along a tent. "We might need to camp out," Leaf told Maya as she stuffed the now compacted tent into her own, bigger bag.
They seemed to fly out the window, it was all in a blur from excitement. She ran, following Leaf as well as she could. Soon they came to a large patch of grass surrounded by woods. There they explored and played until noon, when they ate peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, along with a banana each.
Then, suddenly, hurriedly, Leaf jumped to her feet. "I have to go, sorry," she shouted from a few yards away. She was running, her medium-long hair trailing behind her.
Maya worried. What if Leaf never came back? No, that's silly, she told herself. But she still worried.
Maya started to cry. Her tears streamed down her cheeks and into the wind. At this time of day, the woods got windy. Maya shivered. "I wish I had a jacket," she said aloud.
I could live here, Maya realized. I could set up the tent as a house, and catch fish from the stream for meals... She pulled the tent out of Leaf's bag, starting to carry out the first part of her plan, when Leaf came rushing along, crunching fallen leaves all the way. "What, you think you're going to stay that way?" She stuffed the tent into the bag, picked up Maya, and began to walk.
Getting home was all blurry now, whenever Maya thought about it. Leaf had carried her all through the field, and when they finally got home, it was night time. Maya fell asleep the instant she touched the bed, like on Friday night.
Asleep or not, this story remained in Maya's head the rest of her life.

It was recess time, and the yard was noisy from all the yelling. To Ella, it seemed like everyone was yelling, the girls especially: their chants of "Go, Ella, go," drowned out the rest.
She was standing in front of a ledge made of play structure. A wide gap separated this ledge from another one, maybe one or two yards away. A rope was tied from a bar on this ledge to a bar on the ledge Ella was standing on. She was supposed to walk on it like a tightrope; she knew it.
Ella's big brother came over to her. "You can do it, El," he told her. "Remember gymnastics lessons?"
Ella ignored him. Shaking from fear, she carefully moved one foot forward, closer to the rope.To small a distance,she decided, then moved it a little further. This time, it landed on the rope. Carefully, step by step, Ella made her way a small distance across the rope. The girls' cheers were louder now.
All the cheering must have motivated a teacher to come out, because there one was suddenly one there: the science teacher for the fourth and fifth grades. "What's going on here?" she asked, and then, seeing Ella, exclaimed, "Oh, you poor girl! Forced to walk a tightrope!" And, right then and there, she scooped Ella up and put her down on the woodpiece-covered ground. Luckily for the boys, she had not seemed to notice that the "tightrope" was actually stolen rope from the P.E. cabinet.
And the surprising thing was, though Ella had expected the boys to remember the contest and schedule it for another time, the contest was never finished. All the rest of her first-grade life, and all the other grades too, and the after-grades, too, she remembered the contest.
And that is the end.

Black Ice

"And be careful not to skate on the black ice," warned Mother as she gave the twins their skating bags. "You'll fall through."
"We won't, Mama, I promise," said Jennifer.
"Me too," said Lucy.
So the twins walked and walked and walked in the cold winter weather until they came to a frozen pond."Let's begin," said Jennifer.
"Me too," said Lucy.
It was quite a large pond, so Jennifer went skating around it to make sure was safe.
"Fine, except for some black ice," she reported when she came back.
"Well, we can just skate around it," said Lucy.
They skated for a few minutes until Lucy said,"Jennifer, go skate on that black ice."
"No," said Jennifer, "you do it."
"Me too," said Lucy.
So Lucy went over the black ice and easily skated over it. "Now it's your turn," she told Jennifer when she came back.
Jennifer went to the black ice. When she was halfway through skating over it, there was a sudden crack.
"Uh-oh," said Lucy.
She quickly skated over to the black ice just in time to grab Jennifer by the arms and pull her out. Then they warmed each other up until the only evidence of them having an encounter with black ice was their hands: they had turned black.
When they got home, Mother asked them, "What have you two been up to?"
"Nothing," they both innocently said, hiding their bare hands behind their backs.

The Stairs to Antville

Antville was a high town for ants. It was so high there were stairs to climb to get to it.
One day, two ant friends were climbing those stairs. It was taking them a long time.
"It's been a long time since we started," said one ant.
"Maybe we should turn back," suggusted the other.
"Of course not!" screamed the first ant, so loudly that they both started laughing.
"I feel the stairs wobbling," noticed the first ant.
"Let's run!" screamed the second ant, and they did.
But they were too late. All the stairs toppled down onto the ants.
"I never noticed the stairs to Antville were made of blocks," said the first ant.
"Me neither," agreed the second one.
And there they fell asleep in a pile of blocks.