Read Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf for Free Online Page B

on the phone for forty-five minutes and all they can tell me is that she’s been released. They won’t give me any details because I’m not family, and they don’t seem to care that a friend might want to see how she’s doing.”
    “A
friend?
”
    “Oh, Samantha, come now. The woman was hurt—the least I can do is check in on her.” She tied the apron behind her and said, “Maybe she’s on her way home now.”
    I didn’t want to tell her that the last thing we needed was for Mrs. Graybill to come home. I mean, Mrs. Graybill would probably sign over her Social Security check to Mrs. Landvogt if it meant getting rid of me. And the more I thought about it, the more I knew that I really couldn’t tell Grams about anything. If I let on about us being the entrée on La Croc’s supper menu, she’d go into hyper-worry and self-destruct before the day was out.
    And thinking about the mess Grams was in because I had to live with her, well, I kind of lost my appetite for that gigantic ham and cheese. So when she dug a can of chicken gumbo out of the cupboard and said, “Sound good?” I just nodded and got busy making toast.
    And I was hanging over the toaster, watching the wiresglow, thinking about what Grams and I would do if Mrs. Landvogt
did
turn us in, when the phone rang.
    Grams picked it up, and for the longest time she just stood there with her eyes expanding to fill up her owl glasses. Finally she said, “Lana, Lana, slow down! NBC? Okay! That’s wonderful. We’ll tune right in.” She got off the phone and cried, “She did it!”
    Grams rushed into the living room to turn on the TV, but I froze. I mean, Lady Lana had dumped me at Grams’ because she didn’t feel like being a mom anymore. She felt like being a movie star. And in the beginning when she’d call and say she’d come back soon, I couldn’t wait. I missed her. But it didn’t take long to figure out that soon meant later and that she didn’t really care about being with me. She cared about being a movie star.
    And I’d gotten used to living with Grams—used to the couch and hiding my clothes. Used to sneaking in and out. Even used to Mrs. Graybill. And all of a sudden it hit me that I’d rather have to sneak past ten Mrs. Graybills every night than leave Grams to go live with my mom. And watching Grams flip the channels on the TV, I realized that this was it. It didn’t matter what Mrs. Landvogt did to me. My mother had made it, and my time with Grams was up.
    I stumbled into the living room, feeling like the air was too heavy to breathe. “Is she in a movie?”
    “No, a commercial! She says there’s great money in commercials and seems to think it’s a real foot in the door.” She beamed at me. “Isn’t this exciting? Your mother’s going to be on TV!”
    I sat down on the couch, trying to remember the last time I’d seen Grams so excited. “What’s it a commercial for?”
    “She wouldn’t say. But she says it’s okay to laugh—that it’s supposed to be funny.”
    I didn’t feel like laughing. I felt like crying. Grams sat next to me and patted my knee. “Are you all right?”
    I forced up the corners of my mouth and nodded, and we sat there together, staring at the TV.
    And then all of a sudden there she was, for the first time in over a year, my mother. She walked toward me on TV and smiled like only Lady Lana can smile. Then she stopped, and what came out of her mouth was, “Everybody gets gas.”
    I held my breath and covered my face with my hands. And as I’m peeking through my fingers, she says, “But sometimes when gas pressure gets too much, I can feel like this …” and there goes her body, blowing up like a hot air balloon. “When that happens, I take GasAway, and feel better.” She holds up a box of GasAway, shrinks back to normal, then smiles at the camera and says, “Try it, when you feel like this …” and her body blows up like a zeppelin again, “… and you’ll feel better!” She shrinks