Mom asks on Thursday night. “The weather forecast said the rain will stop by tomorrow, so Winter Games Day will go off without a hitch.” I am curled up on our saggy green sofa with my head on a flowery pillow on Mom’s lap, and we have both been reading library books. I’m collecting Required Reading Points, because I have to have at least forty by the end of January, but my mom gets to read just for fun. Well, reading my book is fun, too. But when the grown-ups at Oak Glen turned reading—one of my favorite things—into points-gathering, they ruined it, in my opinion. That’s probably the way Stanley felt when they turned exercise into “a punishment,” as he put it. Next thing you know, they’ll tell us kids that our assignment is to breathe—and then we’ll all want to hold our breath until we turn blue. I tug the soft yellow blanket up to my chin and listen to the tick-tick of the rain outside and the tick-tock of the old clock on a nearby table. Every so often the wind swirls by, and the eucalyptus trees creak and groan as if they are complaining about having to stay outside on such a miserable night.
