How to (Almost) Ruin Your Summer by Taryn Souders

Author:Taryn Souders
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2016-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

Saturday, June 19

Entertain a Trade

At dinner, Victoria plopped down in the empty chair next to me.

I stopped with my burger halfway to my mouth. “What are you doing here?”

She took a sip of her soda, leaving a lip gloss smear on the straw. “It’s a free country. I just thought I’d join you and see how your day on the farm went.” She winked.

Pogo shot her a glare.

I shifted my chair and turned my back to Victoria.

“How’d the horseshoe tournament go?” Nathan asked me.

“About as well as it could when you slip in a pile of cow dung, fall, and throw the horseshoe behind you.”

Nathan laughed so hard he almost fell out of his chair.

“I’d think it was funny too if I hadn’t gotten stuck with that idiot goat. There I am, watching all the normal animals get chosen, one by one. The horses went first—no surprise there. No one wanted King Arthur. He was the only animal left.”

“Poor King Arthur,” said Pogo.

Victoria started humming “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”

I ignored her, but my face flushed anyway.

Pogo picked up her fork and harpooned a tomato. “I saw Charlotte and Leslie chose vet med too. What animals did they get?”

“Leslie got a horse. Charlotte got the chickens. She’s named them all after dipping sauces.”

Sebastian snorted. “That is funny.”

“Not as funny as your science experiment,” said Nathan.

“What’s your experiment, Sebastian?” I asked.

Sebastian cleared his throat. “I am going to prove Spanish is the best language in the world.”

“Lame,” Victoria said under her breath.

I took a deep breath and counted to ten. It was something my mom told me to do whenever I got mad—although with Victoria, I might need to count a lot higher than ten.

I cleared my throat. “How are you going to prove that Spanish is better?”

“Easy,” Sebastian said. “I talk to plants.”

I coughed into my drink. “I don’t see how talking to shrubbery is going to prove anything…except that you’re nuts.”

“Nuts have nada to do with it,” Sebastian said. “I take two sets of plants. I talk to one in English and the other in Español. The plants that grow fastest and best will be Spanish plants. Just wait, you will see.” He grinned.

“What’s your experiment going to be, Nathan?” I asked.

“Sea monkeys.”

Victoria snickered next me. This time I counted to twenty.

“What are sea monkeys?” asked Pogo.

“They’re a type of brine shrimp. Mega-tiny—you can’t even see them unless you look superclose, at least when they first hatch.”

“Do they actually look like monkeys?”

“No. You basically add shrimp eggs to salt water and watch them grow. Actually, Mr. Dave already has hatched sea monkeys I can use.” He thought for a minute. “I think I want to experiment with what kind of food makes them grow the fastest.”

I’d never heard of sea monkeys before. “What do they normally eat?”

“Yeast.”

Victoria sat up straight. “Well, stay out of my kitchen—you’ll have to get your yeast elsewhere.”

I turned to her. “Why don’t you stay out of our conversation, Victoria? Plus, it’s not your kitchen.”

She smirked.

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