Knock About with the Fitzgerald-Trouts by Esta Spalding & Sydney Smith

Author:Esta Spalding & Sydney Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2017-05-01T16:00:00+00:00

So it was that a few days later, as they rounded the bend at Skoot’s Point, Penny was wailing and flailing in her car seat, Toby and Pippa were crooning at top volume, Kimo was covering his ears, and Kim was so distracted she didn’t notice that the car in front of them had stopped in the middle of the road. They were on a collision course with its bumper.

“Watch out!” Pippa screamed, seeing what was coming and breaking out of the song. Instinctively Toby clutched Goldie to his chest. Kimo gripped his seat just as Kim jolted to her senses, hit the little green car’s brakes, and skidded them to a stop inches away from the bumper.

They all sat for a second in shock, their hearts racing with relief at the nearness of the near miss.

Kimo was the first to speak. “What’s going on?” He had noticed that not only were the cars in front of them stopped completely but people had turned off their engines and were getting out of the cars to walk up the shoulder of the road that ran beside the ocean. They were going to look at something farther up ahead. But what?

The Fitzgerald-Trouts were too curious not to find out. They clambered out of the car and began picking their way along the gravel shoulder of the road. Even with feet as tough as theirs, it was hard walking on that gravel. Kim found herself picturing the closet full of shoes. If only I had those tap shoes, she thought, tap, tap, tap, tippity, tap…

As they walked farther, they could see clouds of billowing smoke rising up from the road ahead. “You think it’s a fire?” asked Kimo.

“Or an accident, maybe,” said Kim. “Could be the smoke is from the engine.”

“I don’t want to see an accident,” said Toby.

“I don’t want Penny to see one either,” added Pippa.

A boy walking past them toward his car must have overheard because he called out to them, “It’s no accident.”

“What is it?” asked Kimo.

“Only the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” said the boy, flashing a wild grin of excitement at the Fitzgerald-Trouts before they lost sight of him in the crowd.

“Let’s go,” Kimo said, and picked up his pace and pushed through the crowd that had come to a standstill. People were pulling out cameras, holding them up over their heads, trying to get photographs of whatever it was that was causing the smoke. The children pushed on, saying, “Excuse me, excuse me”—polite but determined.

At last, when they broke through, they found something so unexpected that it was worth the struggle. A long red-and-black river of swollen lava had come down from the volcano at the top of the mountain. Having scorched a path through the forest, it was now pouring its burning mass across the road, making it impassable.

Far away, on the other side of the seething river of molten rock, which looked almost puffy with heat, they could see a crowd gathered, composed of people who had been driving their cars in the other direction.

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