Read Trouble Magnet for Free Online

school.
    “Wait!” Julio shouted. “They'll get you!”
    I kept running.

A mazingly, I made it to Ms. Wing's room without running into Tito and Frankie Diamond. The door was locked.
    I banged on it. “Darci! Are you in there?”
    My voice fell back into the empty schoolyard.
“Dar-ceeee!”
    Mr. Moto, the janitor, poked his head out of a classroom. “What you want?”
    “My sister, Mr. Moto. Darci Coconut. Have you seen her?”
    “Everybody gone. Go home. Nobody here.”
    Maybe she went home by herself, I thought. She could do it. She wasn't scared.
    I took off.
    Take the long way home. It's safer.
    But why hadn't I run into Darci when I ran back to school to look for her? If she'd been walking home, I would have passed her.
    Now I was really worried. I picked up my pace, jogging, then sprinting as thoughts of creeps and bad guys flooded my brain.
    By the time I reached my driveway, I was sweating like a boiling crab and twice as mad. At myself. What kind of brother forgets his own sister?
    I ran into the garage.
    “Darci!”
    I threw open the door.
    She was in the kitchen, pouring herself a bowl of Rice Krispies. She looked up. “Hi, Calvin,” she said, as if it was just any old regular day.
    I slumped back against the door and sagged with relief. “I was … supposed … to walk … home with you… I forgot.”
    Rice Krispies tumbled into the bowl. “That's all right.”
    All right? I slid down to the floor. I put my elbows on my knees and covered my face with my hands.
    “When you didn't come, I just started walking,” Darci said.
    I shook my head. “Mom's going to kill me!”
    “Why?”
    I looked up. “Are you gonna … you know, tell her?
    “Tell her what?”
    “That I forgot to walk you home.”
    Darci cocked her head as if that thought hadn't even crossed her mind. “Should I?”

    “Prob'ly, yeah … but … will you?”
    Darci shrugged and took a bite of cereal.
    “You can if you want to,” I said. “I won't get mad.”
    Just then I heard an engine out in the driveway. “Someone's here.” I sprang up and ran to look out the window, thinking maybe Tito got one of his high school friends to give him a ride. But it wasn't Tito.
    “It's King Kong.”
    King Kong was Ledward, Mom's boy friend. I don't know why I called him that, except that he was a hundred feet tall. His real name was Ledward Young. He was half Hawaiian and half a bunch of other stuff.
    “He's here to fix up your new room,” Darci said.
    I groaned, remembering that disaster. Time to move in with the bugs.
    Ledward parked his old army jeep on thegrass. It didn't have a top, like a convertible. He unfolded himself as he got out, wearing shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and rubber slippers, like everyone else.
    “Hey, boss,” he said when I got outside.
    “Hey.”
    Standing next to Ledward, I felt like a mouse. He told me one time, when
he
was in fourth grade he was as tall as his teacher. But the most amazing thing I'd learned about him was that he'd gone to school with Mr. Purdy and Uncle Scoop. They were all friends then, and were still friends now.
    “Daniel treat you all right today?” Ledward asked.
    “Who?”
    “Mr. Purdy is what you'd call him, I guess.”
    “Yeah, he's cool. He calls our class boot camp.”
    Ledward laughed. “That would be him.”
    “He has a tattoo.”
    “He's a good man. The best.”
    I nodded, remembering the food fight andthe centipede, and how Mr. Purdy hadn't even chewed me out or sent me to the principal's office for any of it. Except there was that classroom greeter job. I frowned. I'd have to shake Shayla's hand and say “Welcome to class, Shayla.” Every day.

    “Grab the toolbox off the backseat,” Led-ward said. “Let's go look at that storage room.”
    “Is Mom really making me move out there?”
    “You don't want to?”
    “Would you?”
    “Sure. It would be like having my own place. Look at the view you got … mountains, river, the street. Better than what you have now, ah?