Fourth-Grade Disasters Read Online Free Page A

and told him that he needed to come back home and turn off the hose. Brody got so excited that he forgot to do things sometimes.
    Mason’s mother came into the kitchen.
    “Did you and Brody have fun?” she asked.
    Mason nodded. Even digging a pointless hole in the hot sun was sort of fun if he did it with Brody and Dog.
    “Did you think any more about the Platters?” she asked then, in a tone obviously intended to seem casual.
    When he didn’t answer, she went on. “Your father and I talked some more about it, and we’ve decided that if after giving it a fair try—a fair try, Mason—you really don’t want to do it, we’re not going to force you. But we think it’s important that you give it a fair try.”
    “What counts as a fair try?” Mason asked. He had tried it out already in his mind and hadn’t liked it one bit. Would a fair try be one practice? Two practices? He hoped it wasn’t going to be two whole weeks.
    “Three months,” she said.
    Mason felt the color draining from his face.
    “Just until the first concert. And then, after that, it’s your decision.”
    After
that
? She might as well have said,
Just try it for fifty years, and after that, it’s
your
decision
.
    “Okay?” she asked.
    What could Mason say?
    He shrugged, which he knew she took as a yes, and swallowed melted ice cream from the bottom of his half-finished float. He had the dread, dread, dread, dread down in his heart, down in his heart to stay.

4
    On Tuesday morning, at 7:45, Mason and Brody walked in the door of Plainfield Elementary for the first rehearsal of the Plainfield Platters.

    Mrs. Morengo, the retired music teacher who had stayed on at Plainfield Elementary to direct the Plainfield Platters, was a tiny woman, hardly taller than Mason. She was the teacher who had written the words to “Puff the Plainfield Dragon.” During his first four years at Plainfield Elementary, Mason had watched her conduct Platters concerts, standing onstage in front of the chorus ona wooden box. As she conducted, she leaped about with such energy that there was always the possibility that she would fall off the box. So far, to Mason’s knowledge, she never had.
    After Mrs. Morengo’s words of welcome, the first song of the day was “Puff the Plainfield Dragon.”
    “Yes, you all know our Puff,” she said. “You have been singing about Puff since the first day of kindergarten, yes? But we begin each year with Puff because he inspires us. We are called the Plainfield Platters. But we are really the Plainfield
Dragons
. Hear us roar!”
    Mason noticed that the real-life Puff—the stuffed toy—had been taken out of the glass display case and now sat propped up on a chair next to the piano. Puff leaned to one side, as if he were slightly tipsy.
    When the students took their places on the risers in the music room, Mason carefully chose a spot at the very end of the second row behind one of his taller classmates. There was no way he was going to stand next to Brody, front row, center. Mr. Griffith, the dad who played the piano for the Platters, began the opening chords of “Puff.” Mason bent his knees and slumped his shoulders so that Mrs. Morengo would hardly be able to see him.
    Mason Dixon, invisible dragon, the dragon with the silent roar.
    He mouthed the words successfully without attracting any notice to himself. Looking toward Mrs. Morengo, out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Brody belting out the tune as if it were opening night on Broadway for
Plainfield Platters: The Musical
. Brody’s second-best friend, Sheng, was standing next to Brody, singing with almost as much enthusiasm.
    Mason felt a twinge of jealousy that the two of them were having so much fun together. But it was better to share a love of Dog with Brody than a love of Puff the Plainfield Dragon.
    Unfortunately, standing next to Mason was Dunk, who had also chosen a hidden spot on the second row. Dunk seemed to have made it his project for the day to