Record Breaker by Robin Stevenson

Author:Robin Stevenson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2013-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

The woods were quiet and cold, and something about the quietness seemed to affect Kate, because she suddenly stopped talking and slowed her pace, walking beside me in silence. I kept thinking about the Millers. I hoped Allan wouldn’t tell his mom that I’d taken off. If Mrs. Miller called Dad, that’d be one more thing for him to be mad about. Maybe they’d assume I’d gone home.

It was only yesterday that I'd promised Mom I'd behave. I shoved my hands deep into my coat pockets and tried not to think about it. It wasn’t like I was doing anything wrong. Besides, Dad shouldn’t have accepted the invitation without asking me. I kept telling him I didn’t even like Allan.

We scrambled up the slippery trunk, me ahead of Kate. Once I was sitting on the smooth wood boards, I pulled the Guinness Book of Records out of my bag.

“Here,” I said, handing it to Kate. “I want to break a record.”

She took the book from me with her dark eyebrows raised. “To get your name in here? I mean, in the next one?”

“Yes. No.” I shook my head. “I don’t care about being in the book. As long as I break a record—that’s the important part.”

Kate flipped through the book. “Um, tallest mountain…”

“You need the section on human achievements.” I reached over and opened the book to the right spot.

“Wow.” She scanned the entries. “Pole squatting! Did you read this one?”

I’d read all of them, many times. “Yeah. Maurie Rose Kirby. The girl who sat on top of a pole for, like, two hundred days.”

“To protest being called a juvenile delinquent!”

“I know. Crazy, huh?”

“I think it’s great.” She turned a few pages. “Ooh. Gun running! And human cannonball!”

I frowned. “Not really options, Kate.”

“I suppose not.” She sounded regretful. “Wow,” she murmured. “This guy got the record for returning the most money. He found two hundred and forty thousand—”

I cut her off. “I know. Almost a quarter of a million dollars. Can you imagine?”

“And he returned it to its owner!” Kate shook her head slowly.

“Well, I know what you’d do,” I said. “You didn’t even return the dime you found at Tony’s.”

“Hmph,” Kate snorted, sounding a little offended. “It says here that the guy who returned the money got lots of letters from people who thought he was crazy.”

“Maybe he was just a really honest person,” I said. “Unlike some others.”

Kate ignored my dig. “Well, what would you do? Would you rather break the record or keep the money?”

I thought about it for a minute. My parents worried about money sometimes, I knew that. But would a quarter of a million dollars be enough to make my mom smile again? Would her son being a record breaker be enough? “It’s not a problem I’m likely to have,” I said at last.

“Sounds like something my dad would say.” Kate made a face. “Hey, how about this one then, Mr. Picky? Longest fall without a parachute.”

“That’s the guy whose plane was on fire, right?”

“Eighteen thousand feet! And he didn’t even break a bone.

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