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seemed to change his mind, shaking his head, and then went back to the Mom Phone Call Room. “Your mom wants you and me to come up with a service-learning project. She says you’ve been procrastinating?” He turned to look at her. “That’s not like you, Veelie.” He only called her Veelie when he was worried. He flung his arm over her shoulder, rocking her off balance and into his side. “I have a suggestion for your service-learning project.”
    A quiver of excitement wriggled up Vee’s spine. “Great! With you?”
    “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve decided to coach the boys’ soccer team, and we need a statistician. It would be a great way to practice math and be with me and the boys. Help us spend some family time.”

Chapter 8

Just What Is Going on Here?
    O h look! Your Dumpster cats, Vee.” Sunny pointed toward six felines, all shades and stripes of gray, black, and white, who loitered in and out of the bushes and on the Dumpster.
    Vee stretched on the stairs, watching the curious kitten play with some kind of crawling bug over by the Dumpster. Bugs. She shivered and flexed her feet. “I can’t understand why old Hermann wants to get rid of them. And what does he mean by getting ‘rid’ of them?”
    “Hermann’s old. Maybe he’ll forget he wants to do that,” Esther suggested. “Okay, girls, time to sign in for our projects.”
    Groans from everyone.
    “I do not like the smell of chicken.” Aneta pulled her hair off her neck and twisted it into a knot.
    “I do not like handing Frank tools,” Sunny joined in.
    “I do not like old ladies telling me ninety jillion times how to upload pictures to the website for the Helpful City Festival,” Esther complained.
    “I do not like sorting and scanning photographs.” Vee laughed with the girls. After Dad’s
ultim-o-horrible
suggestion that she be the numbers keeper on Saturday, she had volunteered for anything upon entering the ALC today. Now she wished Mr. Tuttle had picked something more interesting for her.
    Esther pulled an “I’m sorry” face. “Aneta, I heard the kitchen lady say you were cutting onions for lunch tomorrow.”
    At Esther’s comment, Aneta made a face, stood, and pushed her hair behind her ears. “I will cry, cry, cry,” she said, making an equally pretend sobbing face.
    Vee sprang to her feet. “I have to be home for Math Man in two hours. I better get going with my sorting and scanning. What are we supposed to learn from these projects anyway?” She stretched. “If I’m late twice or a no-show, ole Math Man will kick me off his list and it’s good-bye ALC.”
    “We are good workers,” Aneta said, sounding a little anxious. Vee knew her friend had a tendency to worry about doing the right thing.
    “Even if our projects are screaming boring,” Sunny added.
    Vee trotted into the building. Almost two hours of photo boxes.
Geesh.

    At the end of her time, balancing three boxes of photos that had been combed through and scanned, Vee staggered down the hall toward the arts and crafts room where she had been promised the closet had been cleaned out and was ready for more stuff. What did they need to keep old photos for anyway? Who was going to look at them stashed in a closet? She felt a sneeze coming on and slowed, trying to keep the big boxes steady.
    The enormous man had said she should only take one box at a time, but that would mean going back for two more trips. She would then cut it too close to make it home for Math Man. So she had insisted the enormous man place two
small
boxes on top of the first one. His idea of small and hers were different. She felt the boxes slip.
    The sneeze tickled again. So did thoughts of whether to set down the boxes and just sneeze. Then she might not be able to pick them up again. That would make her really late. What if she sneezed with the boxes? Would she fall down and not be able to get up and
still
be late? Trying to breathe deeply and thwart the sneeze, she smelled burning