Frosted Kisses by Hepler Heather

Author:Hepler, Heather [Hepler, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2015-11-10T08:00:00+00:00

Mom drops me off at the ARK on her way to Lancaster. She’s delivering a last-minute Thanksgiving order. Mom asked me to be creative and they came out awesome. I made four different kinds. Some have a turkey leg made from a mound of frosting, graham cracker crumbs, and a white chocolate “bone.” Others I made to look like a dish of peas and carrots. I made the carrots out of orange Starbursts and the peas are chewy SweeTarts. The mashed potatoes came out the best with a yellow Starburst for the butter and a pool of caramel sauce for the gravy. The last kind just has mini pecan pies on top with a tiny scoop of vanilla frosting for the ice cream.

Mom tells me she’ll be back in a little over an hour to pick me up. She’s not about to chance Gram being there alone in case Dutch arrives early. I walk down the long driveway and around the side of the house to where the shelter is. I’m actually pretty nervous about seeing Tally. I haven’t spoken to her since the meltdown in art class. I thought she’d call me, but she never did. I almost didn’t come this morning, but I thought bailing might make everything worse.

I don’t see Tally, so I head toward the building housing the exotic pets. The ARK is really just a bunch of buildings nestled among the trees between Monica’s house and Six Mile Lake (which for the record isn’t six miles long. It’s six miles from town). It’s obvious from looking at it that Monica just added buildings as she needed to. Nothing matches. The dog building is blue. The cat building is pink. And the exotics building is half-and-half. I head straight for this last building, which overlooks the lake. Most of the animals in the exotic building aren’t really exotic at all. They are just common lizards and parakeets, but there are a few really odd residents. In addition to Snowball, the wingless albino vulture, there’s Poe, a raven with a permanently broken wing and a limp. And the newest resident: Winston Churchill, a blind snowy owl. He’s my favorite.

I pull open the door and head inside. The heat lamps over the lizards’ cages give everything a rosy glow and warm the whole space. I walk back to Churchill’s cage and give him the peanut butter and sunflower seed cookie I made for him. I know he’d prefer some kind of rodent, but I’ll leave that for Monica. I brought extra cookies for both Poe and Snowball because they’d raise a stink if they saw me feeding Churchill and they didn’t get anything. The door opens just as I’m giving the last of the cookie to Poe.

“I thought I saw your mom pulling out of the driveway,” Tally says. She’s carrying bowls of cut-up apples and lettuce leaves for the lizards and a takeout container of crickets for the snakes. I pass out the fruits and veggies while Tally handles the live dinner.

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