The League of Picky Eaters by Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic

Author:Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780358375364
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

“But where did it come from?” I asked, paging through it.

Everyone exchanged looks.

“We don’t know,” Alice said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Alice, Akshay, and Willa looked at Ralph, who was staring dreamily off into space. Akshay cleared his throat. But Ralph’s focus on whatever he was seeing didn’t waver. Alice nudged him with her foot. Still nothing.

“HEY RALPH!” Willa yelled, shocking me and, judging by the blush on her face, shocking herself a bit as well.

“What? Oh. What?!” Ralph said, startled. He looked around at all of us. “What was the question again? Sorry, I was thinking about the fluffiest mashed potatoes and how you have to get butter just the right temperature to melt in them before the potatoes go all cold and lose all chance of being delicious.”

Akshay sighed. “Minerva asked where the note came from.” He pointed at the binder.

“Oh, yeah,” Ralph said. “It’s the weirdest thing. Last year, I found it in my backpack one day. Way down at the bottom under a bunch of stuff. No idea how long it had been there.”

“Did you ask your parents?”

“No way,” Ralph said. “They hate how bad I am at Eating. When they learned I was put in RETCH this year, my dad cried. He was so disappointed in me.” He looked down. “It made me feel real lousy.”

I bit my lip. I wasn’t exactly happy with my parents at the moment, but at least they didn’t get that upset about me testing into RETCH.

“Anyway,” Ralph said. “I told Akshay about the note right away—we’ve been friends since practically forever—and then we spent hours looking for the treehouse.”

“I almost got run over by two bikers and a screaming maniac of a kindergartner on a scooter before we finally found it,” Akshay added.

“So you guys didn’t start the League of Picky Eaters?” I asked, still trying to wrap my head around everything.

Alice shook her head. “No, and the binder doesn’t actually say who started it, but it’s full of tips and tricks to use at school and at home. That’s where we got the idea to use pockets for the Brussels sprouts.”

“And how to grab full bowls or plates of food and pretend they were empty while a teacher was distracted,” Akshay added. “I mean, a lot of this stuff is what we’ve been doing at home for years, but some of it is really helpful.”

“Also, just how to distract a teacher with lots of questions or weird noises, like my fake barfs, or even Akshay faking all sorts of accidents,” Ralph said. “A lot of the notes have dates—some even going back fifteen years—and there’s one in there from four years ago saying that Mr. Kreplach is particularly worried about accidents in the classroom, so he’s easy to distract that way.”

Akshay grinned. “Being known as a klutz has its advantages!”

“And see? There’s a lot of different handwritings, so there have been lots of members over the years,” Willa said, suddenly appearing over my shoulder and pointing out a few pages as examples.

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.