Harry Sue Read Online Free Page A

sneak over to Mrs. Mead's while the crumb snatch-ers napped and lie down right in the middle of it. Itfelt safe to dream of Mary Bell in Mrs. Mead's garden and of how things would be when she came back. And for some reason, it was always easier to conjure up thoughts of my mom there than anywhere else in Marshfield.
    I'm only telling you this, Fish, because it's important to make sense of things. You need to know the backstory. About my accident and how I landed in Marshfield. And how it was with Homer and me. Before. Everybody has a backstory, Fish. Garnett, Mary Bell, Homer, me. Remember that when you're eyeballing a new con. The real story starts somewhere in the past.

Chapter 5
    First thing I do when I get home from school is take Moonie Pie out of the bathtub. It is written in the crumb snatcher code of conduct that nobody messes with me until Moonie Pie is out of the bathtub. Granny sets him there for his nap because she doesn't have enough proper beds. To Granny, it's a bathtub when the drainplug is in and a crib when the drainplug is on the counter. She doesn't have enough proper beds because she regularly takes four or more kids than she's licensed for. Granny has two voracious habits that she feeds by cramming kids into every corner of this house. The first one, straight up, is bingo. Granny loves to gamble. The second is China Country, her curio cabinet of limited-edition ceramic figures that sheorders off the Home Shopping Network. Granny calls them her pretties, a whole planet's worth of stuff locked up behind glass in the dining room. There's a little peasant boy and girl bending toward each other to get a smooch, a squirrel with a tail made out of real fur just about to bite down on a ceramic nut, a milkmaid and her cow, and a princess with a starry-eyed look just waiting for her prince to come.
    That is the same look I got from Moonie Pie, who was so grateful to be sprung, he gave me a sleepy grin that lit up the moldy corners of the room. His little feet were ice-cold. I grabbed the booties he always managed to pull off and wasn't halfway down the stairs before the rest of the bunch attacked my knees.
    “Tell us a story, Harry Sue. Please! Tell us something.”
    “All right, all right. I'll tell you something. Let. Go. Now.”
    On a regular day, there'd be nine crumb snatch-ers hanging all over me. Including the babies, Syl and Moonie Pie, there was, in order of their age: Hammer Head, Wolf Man, Princella, Beanie, Carly Mae, Tiny Tim, and Zipper.
    Granny was nowhere to be seen at the moment, and her live-in help, her nieces Synchronicity and Serendipity, were out back stealing a smoke. Of course, that left the kids to their own devices. Yes,nine children under the age of six alone in a house, completely unattended. If you can't stomach that thought, you'd better close this book right now because it's going to get a lot worse.
    Mostly they were a sorry bunch. Even if they worked together, they couldn't bring me down. Maybe Hammer Head if he caught me off guard. But Granny attracted mild kids, punks who were easy to boss. Soon as lunch was over, all they could think to do was hang out at the windows waiting on me to get home and issue some direct orders.
    “Couple up for count,” I said, handing the baby to Princella and shrugging out of my backpack. I made sure I could see 'em all, nobody off poking their fingers into light sockets.
    “Okay, okay. Wanna hear ‘The Three Little Pork Rinds’?”
    “Tell me about a princess,” Beanie said, tugging on my shirttail and gazing up at me with her big brown eyes. Beanie was all fins and gills, Fish— that's right, a brand-new conette—and she hadn't memorized all the rules.
    I shook my head.
    “A pretty one.”
    “No princesses. Just conettes.”
    “What's a conette?” Beanie wanted to know.
    “Wolf Man?” I nodded in the direction of a four-year-old with a sorry mop of hair.
    “Thath a female convict,” he said, pulling histhumb partway out of his