Moving Day Read Online Free

decided he was a killer lion from a rival pride and pounced on Mary Kay from the coffee table. Not surprisingly, this made her cry.
    “Yes,” Mary Kay said. “But now I really won’t.”
    “It will be okay,” I said, to reassure her. “I’ll come see you.”
    “No, you won’t,” Mary Kay said, still crying. “You’ll be too busy with your new friends, and your k-kitten!”
    I knew this was probably true, but I didn’t say so, because one of the rules of friendship that I wrote down is You should only say nice things to your friends, even if they’re not true. This makes them feel better, and then they like you more.
    Being liked is important. If no one likes you, then you have to eat lunch by yourself, like Scott Stamphley did when he first came to our school and no one could understand anything he said because of his New York accent.
    “I’ll never be too busy for you, Mary Kay,” I said as nicely as I could, considering how mad she was making me. “Although raising a kitten is a lot of responsibility. More responsibility than raising a hamster.”
    “No, it isn’t,” Mary Kay said.
    “Yes,” I said to her. “It really is.”
    “I don’t think you should be so happy about moving,” Mary Kay said. “Because, first of all, if you move it means you won’t be able to walk to school with me anymore.”
    I just looked at her when she said this, because walking to school with Mary Kay isn’t actually all that much fun. She is so afraid of everything that if Buck—that’s the name of the horse who grazes in the last field that’s left in Walnut Knolls (without houses being built on it, I mean), and which also happens to be right next to the sidewalk we take to school—has his head over the fence, she runs away. She’s scared of Buck’s huge teeth, even though I showed her how to hold her hand flat so Buck’s teeth can’t nip her palm when we give him leftover Fruit Roll-Ups from our lunches or whatever.
    You have to know about these things if you are going to be a veterinarian.
    But, remembering the rule about only saying nice things to your friends so they’ll like you, I said, “Well, that will make me sad. But I’ll probably get used to it. Eventually.”
    Apparently this answer wasn’t good enough for Mary Kay, though, because she added, “And also, if you move, you won’t be able to look for that kid’s brain in the bushes anymore.”
    Which I didn’t think was a very nice thing for her to point out. Especially since she knows how much I want to find that kid’s brain.
    And it wasn’t as if I weren’t already freaking out about maybe having to move into a haunted house and start at a whole new school. I mean, except for the part about the kitten—and maybe getting a better best friend than Mary Kay—I didn’t even want to move.
    But I still didn’t know what I was supposed to do about it. It wasn’t like I had a choice about moving. I was just a kid!
    “Look,” I said to Mary Kay, “let’s not fight. I’ll probably be moving in a few weeks, so let’s try to get along until then.”
    “Quit saying that!” cried Mary Kay. “Quit saying you’re moving! It’s my birthday! I don’t want you to say you’re moving ONE MORE TIME TODAY.”
    I felt even worse after that. I’d totally forgotten it was Mary Kay’s birthday…even though I should have remembered, since Carol was coming to school later with the pink-frosting cupcakes.
    So I promised not to tell anyone that I might be moving for the rest of the day.
    And I didn’t. I didn’t tell anyone at all that I might be moving, not even Ms. Myers when she told us we needed to pick a country that we would be studying individually for the rest of the year for our data reports. I didn’t say to her, “Well, Ms. Myers, you see, that will be a problem, because I might not be here anymore after next month.”
    I didn’t tell Brittany Hauser I might be moving when she asked if I wanted to come over to her house to see