Read The Merchant of Menace for Free Online

he’s not scared of her like he would be of any other girl. And she seems to genuinely like the same things he does. One day she brought over a microscope and a bunch of rather revolting slides of things like ant feet and fly wings. Nothing could have charmed him more. He’s really not interested in girls yet, even though it’s macho to pretend he is, and is sort of embarrassed at having one follow him around.”
    Shelley nodded. “I heard my son and his friends using an extraordinarily rude word the other day for a part of the female anatomy. I eavesdropped for a bit and discovered they thought it meant a girl’s hairdo. I explained, as tactfully as possible, that it didn’t mean that and I would wash out the mouth of any child who said it in my house again.“
    “Did you tell them the real meaning?“
    “Good Lord, no! Imagine if they went home and told their parents that Mrs. Nowack was educating them in gutter language.”
    At that moment Todd came slamming into the house. “Mom, help me! That Pet is on her way here. I saw her coming down the street.“
    “I can’t save you. Into each life some Pets must fall.“
    “Mom, I’m serious! She saw me come in the house. What’ll I do?“
    “You’ll be nice to her,“ Jane said mildly. “Let her play with your hamsters.“
    “Every time she touches them she has to wash her hands afterwards like she was getting ready for surgery! Oh, okay. Okay.”
    Pet was at the front door a few minutes later. “That house next door to yours is rather garish, isn’t it, Mrs. Jeffry,“ she said. She made it sound as if it just might be Jane’s fault.
    “Garish,“ Jane said. “Yes, excellent word for it. Come in, Pet. Todd’s just gone up to change his clothes. Come in the kitchen and have some milk and cookies with Mrs. Nowack and me.“
    “I can’t eat sweets because I didn’t bring along my toothbrush,“ Pet said. “But thank you anyway. I’m sure they’re very good. And I can’t drink milk from the grocery store. My father has special milk delivered.“
    “Soy or something, I guess,“ Jane said. “You know what? I have lemonade and also extra toothbrushes that haven’t even been unwrapped. You can have a cookie and a toothbrush,“ Jane said, wondering how a real live child could be this proper and noble. She needed to be tickled or something. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Jeffry.”
    Her eating was as prissy as her speech. She munched the cookie in little rabbity nibbles, holding a napkin at chest level to catch any crumbs. Jane knew Pet was in seventh grade with Todd, but she was one of the late bloomers. Gangly, flat-chested, and looking like she had a larger person’s teeth filling her mouth, she was still a knobby-kneed little girl. Jane could remember some of Katie’s friends at the same age looking like twenty-five-year-old models. Or at least giving it a good try. But Pet, with her bottle-bottom glasses and tightly braided hair, had a long way to go and didn’t appear to be in any hurry.
    “It must take your mother ages to braid your hair every morning,“ Jane said as she poured Pet a glass of lemonade.
    “I don’t have a mother. She died in a car wreck.“
    “Oh, Pet. I’m so sorry,“ Jane exclaimed. “I had no idea.“
    “It’s okay. I was little. I don’t remember her, not exactly. But I have lots of pictures of her. My father braids my hair.”
    Jane was saved from asking any more inadvertently awkward questions by Todd. “Oh, hi, Pet,“ he said as if he were surprised to find her there. “What’s up?“
    “My dad gave me a computer program about pyramids,“ Pet said. “I thought you might like to see it. You can build a sarcophagus with it and move treasures around inside to foil grave robbers and wrap up mummies.“
    “Do you want me to load it on my computer in the basement?“ Jane asked. She had a small office in the basement where she worked on what she’d come to think of as the Endless Novel. She estimated that it