My Homework Ate My Homework Read Online Free Page B

I’m going to let go now, Abby, so stop dancing.”
    She doesn’t. She probably only heard the word
dancing
and thinks I’m encouraging her.
    “Look, kid, I’m your role model. You’ve seen me walk, right? Now you do it. It’s easy. Ready?
Walk!
”
    “Wah!”
    “No, with a
K
at the end, Abby—
Walk
!”
    “Wah!”
    “Fine, have it your way. I’m going to let go. Ready? Wah!”
    Instead of letting go, she grips my thumbs tighter. I try a different tactic.
    “Clap, Abby!”
    She claps, which, of course, means she lets go of my thumbs. I tricked her into standing up by herself. If I tell her she’s standing, she’ll freak out and fall right on her huge butt. That’s what she always does.
    But I can’t help myself.
    “You’re standing!” I say, and applaud.
    She stops laughing and stands there a second, staring at me with her gooey mouth open. Then she looks down at the floor, and down she goes. Air puffs out of her big diaper.
    I clap louder. “Yay, Abby! You stood up!”
    She smiles and claps back. “Uppy!”
    “Yeah!” I say. “You stood uppy! All by yourself! Want to do it again?”
    She stops smiling and points at Bandito’s cage. “Fur!” She’s changing the subject. She doesn’t want to stand up anymore.
    “You want to see the fur? Okay, come on.”
    I hoist her off the ground, stagger over to my desk, and plop her into my chair. She loves riding in my desk chair, so I give her some zigzags and spins on the way to the cage.
    “Fur!” she says.
    Bandito clucks.
    This makes her totally crack up. Her giggling sounds like a machine gun in a bubble bath:
HUH GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH!
[big breath]
HUH GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH!
It cracks me up, too.
    When we’ve calmed down, I roll her over to my rolltop desk and take out a box of stroopwafels from a cubby.
    “Key! Key!” Abby says.
    “I keep telling you they’re not cookies. They’re stroopwafels.”
    I hand her the box, then roll her back to the cage.
    “I know you didn’t eat my stroopwafels,” I say to Bandito, as I pull one out of the box. “I know there was nothing left in my pocket but crumbs.”
    “Key!” Abby says with her hand out. Her arms are so short. They barely reach over her head.
    “I don’t know about giving you a cookie. It’s close to dinnertime.”
    She tilts her head and makes a little pout.
    Maybe I’m her role model after all.
    “Peas?” she asks. That’s her
please
.
    “Okay, but only one.”
    Now, like I said, stroopwafels are expensive, almost a dollar each, which is why my parents won’t buy them for me. I have to buy them myself, with my own money. I don’t get an allowance, so I have to rely on money I rake in from relatives on my birthday and Christmas and stuff. My mother makes me put most of that in a bank account for college, but she does graciously allow me to keep a tiny bit of my own money to buy things I need, like stroopwafels.
    I’m not crazy about the thought of wasting one on a baby who would be just as happy with a Nilla Wafer, so I break one in half. Then I break it in half again and hand her a piece. A quarter of a stroopwafel is more than enough for a baby. She snatches it in her iron grip, stuffs it in her mouth, and starts sucking on it.
    I stuff the other quarter through the bars to Bandito. I don’t know why. Maybe to entertain Abby. Maybe because I feel bad that I accused him of stealing from me when I knew he didn’t. If someone did that to me, I would be so madand would demand at least a quarter of a stroopwafel.
    Bandito creeps cautiously toward it, sniffs it, knocks it around with his paw, then turns and creeps away.
    I can’t say I’m disappointed. I prefer he doesn’t like stroopwafels. And I like the way he made Abby and me laugh. Maybe he’s not so hideous after all.

It may be a new year, but it’s the same old
school
year. I’m still in fifth grade, I’m still behind, and Mr. O. is still being difficult.
    “I appreciate your taking good