Help! Somebody Get Me Out of Fourth Grade by Henry Winkler

Author:Henry Winkler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

MY DAD WAS SETTING the table while my mom was putting the finishing touches on dinner. When I walked into the dining room, I noticed that he was putting out soup spoons, and for a minute, I actually got excited. I hoped that maybe my mom had brought home some of Papa Pete’s mushroom barley soup that we sell at our deli, the Crunchy Pickle. It is my absolute favorite soup.

No such luck.

“Your mother has created a new soup she’s trying out on us tonight,” my dad said.

These are not words you want to hear in my house. My mom is always trying to create new, healthy versions of dishes Papa Pete invented when he started the Crunchy Pickle fifty years ago. But her recipes usually taste something like cow pasture mixed in with a little cardboard.

“Please tell me the soup doesn’t have cabbage in it,” I begged.

One thing I’ve learned in my ten and three-quarter years on Earth is that cooked cabbage not only tastes disgusting on its own, it makes everything else around it taste disgusting too. It doesn’t matter what the anything else is. Even if it’s old leather shoes, if you boil them with cabbage, they’ll taste like old leather cabbage shoes.

“It doesn’t have cabbage in it,” my dad smiled.

Oh, yes!

“She says it’s Three B Soup,” my dad said. “A mixture of beets, Brussels sprouts, and bananas all ground up together with some lima beans thrown in for texture.”

Oh, no! Cement soup. You could probably hold bricks together with it.

My mom came in through the swinging door from the kitchen, carrying a big steaming bowl of the awful-smelling stuff. Her blond hair was all wild looking, like it gets when she’s cooking up something new, and she had a couple chunks of lima bean clinging to her pink sweater. Even though she was pretty messy, it was really cute the way she looked so proud of her new invention. It must have been the way that scientist whose name I can’t remember felt when he discovered penicillin in moldy old dishes.

“Soup’s on,” my mom called out. “Everyone come and get it.”

Emily came galloping out of her room, carrying Katherine on her back like she was taking the lizard on some kind of crazed piggyback ride. Katherine must have smelled the soup, because as she got closer to the table, her nostrils got really big, and she started to hiss.

“Oh, look, Kathy seems upset,” Emily said. “Maybe some nice music would calm her down.”

“Why don’t I put on a CD?” I suggested, like I just had the best idea my brain had ever come up with.

“That’s a very good idea, honey,” my mom said.

Emily took her place at the table, with Katherine the Ugly still draped across her back. Then she looked over at me and winked—Emily, that is. Katherine isn’t what you’d call a winker. I flashed Emily a little smile. I have to admit, the girl may be the oddball of the western world, but for once, she was really taking my side in a very cool, sisterly way.

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