Nixie Ness by Claudia Mills

Author:Claudia Mills [Mills, Claudia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2019-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

At cooking camp the next day Nixie scrunched her eyes shut and clenched her fists tight to concentrate on beaming her Pick us, pick us, pick us! thoughts to Clove. This time it must have worked because Clove began slowly heading in their direction.

Nixie turned on her biggest movie-star smile. Clove would want to feature kids who acted like cooking was the most fun they had ever had in their lives.

Unfortunately, as Clove approached, Vera was acting like cooking was the total opposite of fun. Brow furrowed, she scowled down at the cutting board with intense concentration, cutting each roasted pumpkin slice into squares exactly half an inch long and half an inch wide. Vera probably thought Clove would want to feature kids who were perfect pumpkin-cutting machines. But at the rate Vera was cutting, it would take a whole five-minute video for her to cut three tiny squares of pumpkin.

“Pumpkins originated in Central America,” Nolan said, speaking more slowly, loudly, and distinctly than he usually did while imparting pointless trivia. “Did you know pumpkins are ninety percent water?”

He evidently thought Clove would want to feature kids who were walking encyclopedias of fascinating pumpkin facts. But Nixie couldn’t imagine Clove would want to include a lot of random pumpkin facts in a video that was only going to be five minutes long.

Nixie wanted to hiss to Vera, Smile!

She wanted to hiss to Nolan, Stop talking!

She wanted to tell both of them to act normal, but this was acting normal for Vera and Nolan. Besides, if she whispered anything to them, the whispering would end up on the video, too.

Nixie was afraid even to look at what Boogie was doing, but maybe it was better to know the worst.

When she stole a peek, Boogie was measuring out the maple syrup that would sweeten the soup. Some of the syrup dribbled onto his fingers, and Boogie, being Boogie, licked them. Then, with the same fingers that had just been in his mouth, he scooped up a handful of Vera’s pumpkin squares to dump into the pot of broth and spices they would carry into the kitchen for their turn at the stove.

Nixie stopped herself from giving her usual shriek of Boogie!

Clove followed their team into the kitchen. Nixie made sure to grab the spoon so she’d have her chance at stardom. Forcing herself to ignore her teammates, she did her best to smile brightly enough and stir vigorously enough to make up for Vera’s panicked perfectionism, Nolan’s irritating know-it-all-ism, and Boogie’s total grossness.

As the soup started to bubble around the edges, Nixie gave the mixture such a powerful stir that a square of boiling pumpkin splashed out of the pan and onto her bare wrist.

“Ow!” she yelped. “Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!”

“Are you okay?” Vera asked, her eyes wide with alarm.

“Run your wrist under cold water,” Nolan advised. “Go do it right now.”

Boogie scooped up the offending piece of pumpkin, blew on it a few times, and then popped it into his mouth.

Oh,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.