A Touch of Ruckus by Ash Van Otterloo

Author:Ash Van Otterloo [Van Otterloo, Ash]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2021-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

That evening, Mimsy tried to lift her granddaughter’s funk by insisting that she, Tennie, and Mr. Bolton all go down to the fried catfish place for dinner.

Tennie managed to beg out of the excursion. She wasn’t eager to sit in on a night of elderly flirting, so instead she stayed home and moped in her bedroom. Fox’s weird mood swing earlier had left Tennie feeling raw and out of sorts. Her mind kept replaying their conversation over and over, trying to find where it had gone sideways, and blaming herself even though she didn’t know what she’d done wrong.

“This is dumb,” she said aloud when she’d run out of tears. “All I wanted three days ago was some peace and quiet and space. And now I have this whole house TO MYSELF!” she hollered, smiling down the dark hallway.

It occurred to her that she was completely alone, with not a soul around except through the dark woods, upstairs in a dark house. And Mimsy, whose house was out in the sticks even by Howler’s Hollow standards, rarely locked any of her doors. That wouldn’t do.

Tennie took Poppy’s walking stick in one hand and her cell phone in the other, then systematically flipped on every upstairs light in the house—the hallway, the bathroom, the other guest bedroom with Poppy’s old paintings in it, and Mimsy’s room. Then she crept back down the stairs in her socks and locked the front door. As she did, she hummed Poppy’s song in time with her thumping heart.

Flip, flip, flip! She turned on the switches to all the downstairs lights, saving the kitchen for last, where she locked the back door, too.

Satisfied that the house was secure, Tennie rummaged through the fridge for some leftover biscuits and jam, then settled at the table to check her text messages.

There was a quick “I love you and miss you so much, Spooky Bear!” from her mom, a drawing of a snake in a cowboy hat saying “Ssssee you soon!” from her dad, and one text from her older brother that just said: “Call me.”

Tennie reluctantly pressed the call button by her brother’s number. He answered after the first ring: “What took you so long?”

“Nice to hear from you, too, Birch,” Tennie said through a mouthful of biscuit.

“Sorry. That was rude of me, Tenn. I’m tryin’ to do better about that.”

Tennie nearly choked. “Since when do you have manners?”

“Since … Mom and Dad made me go talk to someone. A counselor dude who wears PAC-MAN bow ties.”

Tennie furrowed her brow. “Why?”

Birch sighed heavily into the phone, hurting Tennie’s ear, then stayed quiet for a long minute. “ ’Cause I’m a little depressed, I guess.”

Tennie clutched the phone. She’d only been gone from her family for three days, and now Birch had gotten blue, too, before Mama even got started up again. “Why? ’Cause we moved?”

“Naw. I’ve been like this for a while, I guess. Anyway, I’m s’posed to be working on not masking it with anger.” He said the last words in a funny voice, and Tennie couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

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.