The Amazing Spencer Gray Read Online Free Page A

head but quietly said, ‘I know. I know.’
    The year before they moved down to Skippers Cove they’d had a rough patch, the Gray family. Spencer and Pippa had watched as their parents orbited one another like unfriendly planets, with more than the occasional fiery collision. The tension got to Spencer, and he found himself blowing up at things at school that wouldn’t normally bother him. He’d even got upset with his oldest mate, Stew, when they were partnered up on the climate change project. Stew hadn’t believed him when Spencer wrote down cling wrap on their list of the things you can put in the recycling bin.
    â€˜Nah, you can’t put that stuff in the recycling.’
    â€˜You can! It’s plastic.’
    â€˜Yeah, but it’s a different kind of plastic from OJ bottles and stuff. Look, my mum’s a total nutter about this and she’s actually got the list of what can go in the yellow bin stuck up on the fridge. She downloaded it from the Council website. I’m telling you, she’s a psycho about recycling—and she hates that you can’t recycle cling wrap!’
    Spencer had let out a kind of animal roar of frustration at that and Mrs Lewis asked Spencer in her shocked voice to leave the classroom until he felt calmer.
    The next day, Mrs Lewis had called his mum. Apparently she’d said Spencer had been ‘sullen’ and ‘lacking in focus’ lately in class. There was a long, tender hug from Mum after school that day.
    Not long after that, the whole family went to see a counsellor at Relationships Australia, which was possibly the most embarrassing thing Spencer had ever had to do. But the counsellor was warm and kind and made sure everybody listened to one another, one at a time. They all had to say one thing they loved about another member of the family. Dad said he loved Mum’s calmness, and then went quiet. Mum choked up a bit and said she loved that Dad was an adventurer, and said without him she’d be stuck in her comfort zone and never push herself to do the hard stuff. Pippa said she liked Dad’s sausage sizzles. Everyone managed to hold in their laughter at that.
    â€˜And what about you, Spencer?’ the counsellor asked. ‘What’s something that you really appreciate about one of the people in this room today?’
    Spencer had never felt so awkward, and nearly had to put his hand over his eyes just to speak. ‘Um ...I guess I like that Mum and Dad are sort of ... two halves of an apple, if you know what I mean. It’s like they’re kind of opposites, but if you put them together they are just right.’
    The counsellor had smiled and looked over at Mum and Dad, who were staring at their feet.
    Mum and Dad had kept going to see her after that, but without Spencer and Pips. The mood in the house lifted like a cloudbank, slowly but surely.
    Now, Spencer checked out the controls and dials around them.
    â€˜They’re all the same flight controls as you’d have in most light aircraft,’ Dad said, pointing and reeling off the names: rudder pedals, control stick, air brakes.
    â€˜Brakes?’ Spencer said. ‘What do you do with those? Slam them on, midair!’
    â€˜No, it’s not a Road Runner cartoon, Spence. Applying the brakes in midair helps you to dump height, if you need to leave a thermal, say. The brakes are also for when you’re on the ground—you use them to slow and stop the aircraft on the runway, and sometimes for ground-turns.’
    â€˜Now, these,’ his dad fondly tapped the dials and glass-covered needles in front of him, ‘are the instruments.They help you manage the controls—the flaps and stick and so forth. The instruments tell you things about the aircraft; the controls do things to the aircraft,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the airspeed indicator, the altimeter, and over here, the variometer.’
    Leon will totally spew when I