The Manny Files book1 by Christian Burch Page B

going to put you in the attic.” The attic has a big, old-fashioned door on it that creaks open to reveal steps that are much too steep to carry anything up. I wentup there once with Dad. There are little board walkways that you have to stay on because if you step off of them and onto the pink insulation, you’ll fall through the ceiling and into the room below. It happened to Grandma once at her house. She was putting away the Christmas lights and lost her balance and stepped into the insulation. Her legs went flying through the floor of the attic, which was the ceiling of the living room. Grandpa Pete was taking a nap in his easy chair when he was suddenly covered with white flakes of ceiling. He looked straight above him and saw Grandma’s legs hanging and kicking from the ceiling. Mom says that Grandpa Pete didn’t mind because Grandma had nice legs. Grandpa Pete died before I was born.
    Anyway, Lulu, India, Belly, and I hid, perfectly quiet, underneath the bed.
    I held my hand over Belly’s mouth so that she wouldn’t reveal our hiding spot. She slobbered all over my fingers. I wiped it on the carpet.
    Lulu whispered, “India, stop tickling my feet with your toes.”
    “I’m not touching you, sweetie,” said India.
    India calls people sweetie when she has attitude. She says it like this: “sa-WHEAT-eeeee.”
    We looked down toward our feet and saw Mom tickling Lulu’s toes. We screamed louderthan before and barely escaped from underneath the bed. Mom even got one of Belly’s socks off of her feet when she was grabbing at our legs.
    Belly peed in her big-girl pants. Belly has just started to wear big-girl pants. Lulu claims that
she
was wearing big-girl pants when Mom and Dad brought her home from the hospital.
    We ran down the hall, Belly with one sock on and a wet spot on the front of her sweatpants. We let out our breath and locked ourselves into the bathroom.
    “Whew!” We all collapsed into the empty bathtub, which was cool and still had a few crunchy drying bubbles near the drain from the night before, when I’d washed my hair. I like washing my hair because afterward Mom dries it with the blow-dryer. She calls it styling.
    Lulu said, “You know that she would never actually lock us in the attic if she caught us, because that would be child abuse and we’d sue her.”
    I got out of the tub and laid my head flat on the bathroom floor so that I could see through the thin slat underneath the door. There was a line of light with two dancing, shadowy socks.
    India turned on the water to wash her hands, and I lifted my head up and said, “Shhh! She’s on the other side of the door.”
    I put my head back down on the floor to take another look, shoving my eye as close to the door as I could to get a better view. There was Mom’s eye staring right into mine.
    “Ahhhhhhhh!” I screamed, very close to my meltdown limit.
    “Ahhhhhhhh!” Belly screamed too.
    We were all too scared to move. The only sound in the tiny porcelain room was our quick, thumping heartbeats trying to escape from our excited chests. We were prisoners trapped in our own bathroom, but instead of having striped uniforms and handcuffs, we had terry-cloth bathrobes and scented potpourri. Belly changed out of her sweatpants and into her tiny bathrobe with the hood that had mouse ears on it.
    As we were lying there on the bathroom floor devising our escape plan, the telephone rang. Mom answered, and we could hear her talking. She didn’t laugh like Woody Woodpecker and say, “You’re kidding,” like she usually does when she’s on the telephone. We exploded out of the bathroom and quietly stood around her.
    Mom said things like “Is she okay?” and “How bad is it?”
    Lulu whispered, “Who is it?” and Mom shooed her away with her hand.
    Mom hung up the telephone and sat down onthe couch. Belly, who still wanted to play, tugged at her pant legs. Mom sat just as she had before, like she was in a coma, but this time her face