The Hole in the Wall by Lisa Rowe Fraustino Page B

and let Sebby bring home a rock that you’re not going to believe.”

    “Isn’t that nice,” said Ma as she squirted mustard on slices of canned meat. “I hope you didn’t spoil your supper, though.”

    “Sebby, aren’t you going to show Ma your pebble?” Barbie smiled smugly my way.

    I tried not to smile back. Little did she know.

    “Sure,” I said, turning out my pockets. Blue balls of lint drifted out, but no rock. Because on my way inside I’d dropped it under the porch. Nobody but me would ever find it. Except for maybe Jed’s Stupid Cat, who was sitting under there guarding the house.

    “Uh-oh,” I said. “I must have lost it on the way home.”

    Barbie looked disgusted. “Ha, ha, Sebby. You put it somewhere else. You just don’t want to show Ma. Cough it up.”

    I shrugged my most innocent shrug with my palms up. “Why wouldn’t I show Ma?”

    Ma put her gourmet supper recipe under the broiler, then stood up with hands on hips to face us. “What’s so special about this rock that you two are making such a big deal out of it?”

    “It’s nothing special,” I said. “Just a plain old gray pebble. I only took it as a souvenir.”

    Barbie growled. “Ma, that rock . . . !”

    I crossed my fingers and wished she’d keep going. Let her try and explain all about the evil magic rock that made music and light displays. Then who would have the reputation for making up wild stories? This could be entertaining.

    Barbie squinted at me, then rolled her eyes. “Oh, never mind.” She punched me hard in the arm on her way upstairs to do whatever she does when she gets away from me. Now we were even.

    After dinner that night, Ma got her homemade cookies out. There was something to take my mind off everything else. I held my first one up to the bare light bulb over the table to study it and tried not to think about my aching stomach. The entrée of burned mustard-on-Spam hadn’t helped my belly any. I actually left some food on my plate. Ma asked why, I told her, and she gave me a shot of the pink chalk medicine. It helped a little. Enough to slip in dessert.

    “I think that I shall never see, a thing as lovely as this cookie,” I said with dramatic flair. The cookie was round and pale yellow like the sun, no burned bottom, just the faintest ring of light brown around the edges, hinting at the possibility of a chewy middle.

    Enough anticipation. I shoved half the thing in my mouth and chomped down.

    The pain! The pain! It shot through my twelve-year-molars and cheeks up into my eyes. That cookie was a rock. “Yow!” I jumped up and ran to the mirror. “Ma, you broke my new teeth!”

    In the background I could see Barbie staring strangely at her cookie. Carefully she put an edge in her mouth and nibbled. She nibbled harder. She twisted and gnawed and nothing happened to the perfect cookie. She made a face.

    “Is this another one of your so-called jokes about my cooking?” Ma picked up a cookie and took a bite. “Ow!” She put her hand to her mouth and stared at the cookie forlornly. “But I timed them! They aren’t burned! What could have—oh!”

    She put her head in her hands. “Oh no . . .”

    “What’s the problem out there?” called Grum from the bathroom.

    “Those godforsaken eggs,” Ma said. “There’s something wrong with them after all. They calcified in the cookies. I sure hope Stan Odum hasn’t tried to eat any of them yet!”

    No wonder my guts felt like a bowling alley. I’d eaten two great big blobs of that cookie dough! I groaned at the thought of what I was in for. As Grum always says, “What goes in must come out.”

    “I’m going to have to give his money back and get those eggs off him,” Ma was saying. “How on earth am I going to explain?”

    If he ate the eggs, Boots Odum might wind up in the same predicament I was in. Ha! “Don’t bother,” I said. “It’s his own fault anyway. He asked for fresh eggs laid this morning, and that’s