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wasn’t sure if I had ever fed her a string bean. I peeked under the table, and sure enough she was eating it. I patted her head and reached for the whole pile on my plate. Mom kept her eye on me as she was cleaning up. But as soon as she opened the refrigerator to put away the butter, I grabbed the handful of beans and, without looking, reached under the table and dropped them.
    I felt a little bad about not eating my vegetables, but I figured Maggie probably needed vegetables, too. Knowing that I was helping my dog eat better made me feel a little less guilty. But as I was feeling proud about helping Maggie, she crawled out from under the table and trotted toward the family room, where my dad was reading the paper. That would have been fine, but as she walked away I noticed something weird. She had a pile of string beans on her head.
    Oh, no! I thought. I must have dropped some of the beans on her head instead of the floor. Before I had time to get out of my chair and into the other room, I heard my dad.

    “Honey,” Dad called out, “why is the dog walking around with a pile of beans on her head?”
    To make a long story short, Mom had a little chat with me about the importance of eating vegetables. I also got two extra chores for the week. But in the end, if it helped me get out of eating my string beans . . . it was worth it.

4
    Valentine Eggs
    THE NEXT DAY after lunch, we began working on our valentine boxes. Mrs. Gibson had us move to the tables in the back of the classroom. I was at a table with Kelly, Brad, Eden, Luke, and Zach.
    Mrs. Gibson put some pink, red, and white construction paper, a bunch of pink and red tissue paper, and some glue in the middle of each table. She showed us a box that a kid decorated last year. It looked pretty good. I knew right then that mine was never going to look that good. My art projects always stink.
    I thought I would glue some tissue paper all around my box first, and then I could make hearts and stuff out of the other paper and glue them on the sides. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that you shouldn’t use too much glue with tissue paper. It soaked right through and got my tissue paper all soggy. There was glue on my hands and on the table, and my tissue paper was ripping apart. I stuck it on as well as I could.
    I glanced around our table to see how everyone else was doing. Zach was cutting out pink footballs and basketballs and pasting them all over his box. I looked over at Kelly, who was cutting out perfectly shaped hearts. I thought I would try that, too. I grabbed some scissors and some paper and started cutting.
    “Whoa,” I said, looking at the weird shape I cut out. It looked nothing like a heart. I tried a few more. They looked more like eggs. If only this were an Easter box, it would look great, I thought. This was harder than it looked. I peeked over at Kelly’s box. It was perfect, covered in hearts of all different sizes and colors.

    “Hey, Kelly,” I said. “How did you make those hearts look so good? Mine look terrible.”
    “Oh, those are hearts?” she said. “I thought you were cutting out eggs.”
    “Yeah, they’re supposed to be hearts,” I said. “Do you think you could maybe cut some out for me?”
    She smiled and grabbed a few pieces of paper. In no time at all, she handed me a pile of pink and white hearts.
    “Wow, thanks,” I said. “Hey, does anyone want to put eggs on their box? I have some extras.”
    “Actually,” Kelly said, “I’ll take them.”
    “What? Are you crazy?” I said. “I was just kidding.”
    Kelly just smiled again and took the handful of egg shapes and, in a matter of seconds, cut them into more perfectly shaped hearts.
    “Wow, you are a heart expert,” I said. I couldn’t believe it. No wonder Graham likes her so much.
    Mrs. Gibson clapped her hands and waited for us to quiet down.“You are all doing such wonderful work on your boxes that I hate to have you stop, but we’ll have time to finish