Now You See It... by Vivian Vande Velde

Author:Vivian Vande Velde
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2012-04-17T00:12:20.849000+00:00

15. The Relative Sizes of Hearts

The spray of water was squirting high into the air off to my left, so I was able to pick my lens out of the bowl of the fountain. I was using the hem of my T-shirt as a drying cloth when the water veered right, nailing me between the eyes.

A moment later the water turned off.

"Yeah, you demented little blueberry," I muttered as I resumed wiping, "and if you're thinking of claiming that was an accident, don't even bother."

I held the lens up to my right eye. I've never mastered winking; I can just barely manage to keep my right eye open with my left eye closed, though not vice versa.

The world came back into focus, including a soggy Larry, sitting on the edge of the drinking fountain. "Of course it was an accident," he told me, sounding as sincere as someone trying to sell something in an infomercial. "Water is slippery; it made me slip." He added, "You look like a pirate, squinting that way: Ahoy, maties! Anyone seen my parrot? Arr, arr." He made a very disagreeable face which was probably supposed to reflect how I looked, with his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his mouth drooping open foolishly.

Before I had a chance to demonstrate to him some of water's other qualities—like the ability to drown little blue smart-mouths—Eleni came up behind me. "Is he really here?" she asked in an awed voice. "Larry?"

"You bet your sweet bottom I'm here," Larry told her, giving a big, noisy air kiss.

"Don't talk to her like that," I warned him, grateful that without the glasses she could neither see nor hear him.

He clicked his heels and saluted sharply. "Jawohl, mein Kapitän!" he assured me. But then he held his hand up by the side of his mouth—a shield, as though that would prevent me from seeing—and made kissy lips at my grandmother.

"What's he saying?" Eleni asked.

"I'm in love," Larry moaned.

"Nothing," I told her. To Larry, I said, "If you can't behave yourself, I won't help you."

"You!" he hooted. "Help me?" He laughed so hard, he rolled off the edge of the water fountain and had to use his wings to keep aloft. As they were a bit waterlogged, he had to flap like crazy just to slow his descent. He looked less like a graceful hummingbird than like a dodo who hasn't been told that dodos can't fly.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," I said in my most superior tone, "but you only tried to get our attention once"—I caught myself in time not to say "Nana"—"once Eleni expressed concern for Julian. You wanted me to stay to help him, so now I'm thinking you want me to go back to help him. And that's the only reason you rescued my lens: on the off chance that I might do what you wanted."

Larry had wafted down to the ground and he was shaking his wings like a dog drying itself off. "Maybe" was all he would admit to.

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.