Plunked Read Online Free

near as I can tell, it’s a salad between two slices of chunky brown bread. So weird.
    When we pull into our driveway, I can hear Nax going crazy even before the car comes to a stop.
    â€œSomeone needs to be walked,” says Mom.
    Nax is barking up a storm in the kitchen. His paws are on the glass of the door, and his eyes are wild with excitement as I cross the lawn. I’ve only been gone a few hours, but Nax can’t tell time. He’s a black Lab, nothingfancy. Sometimes when he’s being crazy we call him “the Lab experiment.”
    Nax and I go for a walk on the Rail Trail that runs along the train tracks near our house. As long as he doesn’t do his business right on the pavement, I don’t really need to pick up after him back there. When he was little, I used to have to drag him off to the side when he started squatting, but he mostly knows the deal by now. Sometimes he even pulls me off to the side, stretching to the end of his leash and contributing some quality fertilizer to the grass and flowers and weeds along the side of the path.
    Nax is a smart dog. I mean, they say Labs are smart, in general, but I think he might be a little smarter than normal. The only reason I even use the leash anymore is because of the squirrels. He goes crazy trying to chase them. If he was an athlete, that would be his sport: the squirrelathlon. He loves it. Sometimes I’ll try to run along with him, just so he can chase them for more than four feet at a time. He’s never going to catch one, but he either doesn’t know that or doesn’t care.
    â€œGood dog,” I say as he finishes his business. He comes up, and I scratch him behind the ear, just where he likes it.
    We turn around at the little pond. It used to be just a big puddle, but it has grown up just like Nax has. We have to get back because there’s homework waiting. Not for Nax, of course — he’s not that smart! — but for me.They’ll probably make me mow the lawn, too. It’s the kind of stuff you want to fast-forward past, but you can’t. This whole week is going to be like that, waiting to find out on Thursday if I’m a starter.
    â€œFun while it lasted,” I say to Nax. Ten feet later, we take off after a squirrel.

Monday mornings always suck. It’s sort of a law of nature. Or a law of human nature, anyway. It’s not like beavers send their kids off to some little beaver hut to learn how to build dams. That’s kind of a dumb thought, but that’s the kind I have when I’m lying there avoiding getting out of bed.
    It’s not like I completely hate school, but I’ll be honest: I kind of hate it on Mondays. There’s never anything I can do about it, though. I have the kind of alarm clock the whole house can hear. I think, in the town of Tall Pines, it ranks third in noise to the clock tower on the Congregational Church and the alarm horn at the Tall Pines Volunteer Fire Department.
    The alarm goes off: BRREEEEP! BRREEEEP! BRREEEEP!
    I scramble to slap the button on top. Then I throw the sheets off and get up.
    I go through the same routine as always: clean up, get dressed, cereal, bus stop, bus ride, school.
    I’m still sort of blinking myself awake in first period, history. History class is ridiculous even on non-Mondays. It’s like the whole nation is terrified that there is some child somewhere who doesn’t know about the Louisiana Purchase.
    Second period is English, and at least I’m fully awake for that. We’re reading The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells. It’s one of those really old books. I’d heard the name H. G. Wells before, but I hadn’t realized he was a real person until the book plopped down on my desk. I thought he was like Sherlock Holmes or something.
    The book is actually pretty cool. First of all, it’s short, and those are the best kind of books. Second, it’s about this crazy doctor (guess what