Twist My Charm Read Online Free Page B

glasses and a hat with a tassel like it’s graduating from high school.
    “Cleo, time to start homework!” Dad’s muffled voice is coming from inside the house, and suddenly I realize I’m still standing out on our front path.
    I run inside, straight to my room, and carefully place the postcard on my dresser, standing it against my bottle of love potion. Are the two things related? They must be!
    With all this in my head, I have a hard time working on my storyboards for the Immersive Interactive Art Installation. I sketch and sketch, but Pandaroo ends up flying around in space with a friendly, smart-looking owl, which isn’t exciting at all. Storyboards are the building blocks of movies; they need to have action!
    When Dad calls me for dinner, he asks to see the postcard, which I’ve brought to the table. “Don’t get your messy vindaloo sauce on it,” I warn him as I daintily hand it over.
    “I’m not eating with my hands,” he mumbles as he takes the postcard. He looks at the photos, then turns it over and reads the other side super quickly. He laughs and hands it back. “I think that’s bacon,” he says.
    “No, it’s chicken vindaloo.”
    “I mean the quote. ‘Knowledge is power.’ ”
    Dad is just as confusing and strange as Uncle Arnie! “If it’s a quote, how can it be bacon?” I ask.
    “No, Francis Bacon. A writer from the fifteen hundreds. He might have been the first one to say it. But a lot of people have said it since.”
    “What about ‘Blaze your own trail’?” I ask.
    “Lots of people have said that too.”
    “So, what does it all mean?”
    Dad finishes chewing, then shrugs. “What does your uncle Arnie ever mean?” He scoops up some rice with his fork, and I edge the postcard farther away from him. “I think it’s up to you to decide.”
    After Dad says that, I really can’t concentrate on homework. And I definitely have a hard time getting to sleep that night. As I stare at my ceiling in the darkness, I keep asking the same question:
Uncle Arnie, why are you so confusing?
    I fall asleep without an answer. But when I wake up, I’m bursting with a fantastic idea. I don’t know where it came from, but I know it can be accomplished—today!—when we go on our school field trip to the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles.
    All I need to do is find a book of love potions (“Knowledge is power!”) and pick one that will make Larry and Samantha fall in love. Somehow in the middle of the night, I realized Uncle Arnie doesn’t want me to wait for his instructions; he wants me to do it myself!
    My heart is almost exploding with happiness because this is such an awesome, positive thing I can do for the girl who was once my best friend. She already likes Larry for sure. He seems to like her too. And even though sixth-grade boyfriends and girlfriends usually make me as sick as a bucket of lumpy papier-mâché does, I could accept those two as a couple…because they’d
both
be my friends then! If Sam is hanging out with Larry, she’ll talk to me more and more, and eventually she’ll be my friend again. I’ll have the group I’ve always wanted.
    Today I’ll blaze my own trail, just like Uncle Arnie wrote. With Madison’s help, I hope.
    When it’s time to go to the library, we get in a line and walk out to the school parking lot, where a big yellow school bus is waiting for us.
    It feels like I’m going back in time as I climb up the stairs. The tall steps are just like the ones in Ohio; the seats are the same shade of green, with the same thin, uncomfortable padding. I’ve done this a million times, but for the kids in my class, it’s a weird treat. They don’t ride school buses; they’ve always been dropped off by parents and nannies and au pairs. “Oh my gosh, I feel like I’m in one of those old teen movies!” Madison says, looking around with the amazement I might feel if I were on an actual movie set. “Where should we sit?”
    Finally I’m an expert at