Casey Little, Yo-Yo Queen by Nancy Belgue

Author:Nancy Belgue
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV037000, JUV0391401, JUV051000
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2013-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

Deirdre stared after the car, her eyes narrowed. Then she turned to Lightning, stamped her foot and grabbed the reins.

The last thing Casey saw as her mother turned out of the driveway and onto the road was Deirdre’s stiff, skinny, hard-edged elbows flailing away at the air, and the glint of a spur as she dug her boots into Lightning’s flanks.

Chapter 7

Casey marched into her room and threw herself on the bed. Things were getting worse and worse. First Geronimo buys Lightning. Then awful Deirdre shows up. Then Zelda tells her that Lightning might be taken away.

Helpless! That’s what she was. Helpless!

Casey propped her cheek on her elbow and stared out her window. The crowd of children in front of Mrs. Lombardi’s sign got bigger every day. And every day more things got delivered to her backyard. In addition to the striped tent, the pinball machine and the cotton-candy machine, now there was a trampoline, a dunking machine and a small merry-go-round. Every kid in town hung out in front of the house, sitting on the sidewalk, skateboarding noisily up and down the street, sitting in the trees, hanging off the fences, BMXing off and on the curb, and, worst of all, practicing their yo-yo tricks on Mrs. Lombardi’s front lawn. Cars with out-of-province license plates cruised by, and news trucks from as far away as Toronto and Detroit had parked on the street. Casey watched the reporters and cameramen knock on Mrs. Lombardi’s door, looking for information. Mrs. Lombardi always offered the reporters cotton candy, but never agreed to do an interview.

Every so often Mrs. Lombardi strolled down her front walk and passed out free cookies to everyone on her property. Trucks came and went, bringing tables, chairs, bags of ice and a loudspeaker system. Two days. The carnival was in two days.

Mickey spotted Casey’s face in her window. He darted across the street, charged through her front door and thundered up her stairs. “Hey, Casey,” he shouted as he burst into her room, “there’s a yo-yo champ here all the way from Michigan!”

Casey sniffed.

“And there’s a stage set up at the very back of the tent. Mrs. Lombardi’s going to start the competition on Saturday at three o’clock.” Mickey took a deep breath and added, “I think you could win it, Casey.”

“Can’t,” Casey said.

Mickey nodded in sympathy. He had been in the front row the day Casey froze.

“If only there was some way you could get rid of that stage fright,” he said. “Like a spell or something.”

Casey and Mickey stared at each other.

“The book,” they said together.

Casey turned and picked up the book that she’d checked out of the library: the book of spells.

A breeze floated through Casey’s open window and ruffled the pages. And there, as if by magic, was a special spell.

“To rid the sufferer of stage fright,” Casey read. Her voice trembled.

“Wow!” Mickey breathed. “It was like an invisible hand turned the pages to what we were looking for.”

“Stop it, Mickey,” Casey said. “It was just the wind.

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