Pool Problem Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  The Mess

  Chapter 2

  Good News and Bad News

  Chapter 3

  The Goodbye Begins

  Chapter 4

  What Pool Problem?

  Chapter 5

  Nightmare

  Chapter 6

  Anna Ambush

  Chapter 7

  It’s Alive!

  Chapter 8

  Meeting Place Tryouts

  Chapter 9

  Pros and Cons

  Chapter 10

  Fond Farewell

  Chapter 11

  P.S.

  Cast of Characters

  CLAUDIA That’s me. I’m thirteen, and I’m in the seventh grade at Pine Tree Middle School. I live with my mom, my dad, and my brother, Jimmy. I have one cat, Ping-Ping. I like music, baseball, and hanging out with my friends.

  MONICA is my very best friend. We met when we were really little, and we’ve been best friends ever since. I don’t know what I’d do without her! Monica loves horses. In fact, when she grows up, she wants to be an Olympic rider!

  BECCA is one of my closest friends. She lives next door to Monica. Becca is really, really smart. She gets good grades. She’s also really good at art.

  ADAM and I met when we were in third grade. Now that we’re teenagers, we don’t spend as much time together as we did when we were kids, but he’s always there for me when I need him. (Plus, he’s the only person who wants to talk about baseball with me!)

  TOMMY’s our class clown. Sometimes he’s really funny, but sometimes he is just annoying. Becca has a crush on him . . . but I’d never tell.

  I think PETER is probably the smartest person I’ve ever met. Seriously. He’s even smarter than our teachers! He’s also one of my friends. Which is lucky, because sometimes he helps me with homework.

  Every school has a bully, and JENNY is ours. She’s the tallest person in our class, and the meanest, too. She always threatens to stomp people. No one’s ever seen her stomp anyone, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened!

  ANNA is the most popular girl at our school. Everyone wants to be friends with her. I think that’s weird, because Anna can be really, really mean. I mostly try to stay away from her.

  Cast of Characters

  CARLY is Anna’s best friend. She always tries to act exactly like Anna does. She even wears the exact same clothes. She’s never really been mean to me, but she’s never been nice to me either!

  SYLVIA really wants to be best friends with Anna, but Anna isn’t very nice to her. I’m not very close with Sylvia, but she’s always pretty nice to me and my friends.

  BRAD is our school’s football star. He’s also really, really cute. Becca and Monica know that I have a secret crush on him. I hope they never tell anyone!

  NICK is my annoying seven-year-old neighbor. I get stuck babysitting him a lot. He likes to make me miserable. (Okay, he’s not that bad ALL of the time . . . just most of the time.)

  JIMMY is my big brother. I stay out of his way, and he stays out of mine. (But sometimes he does give me pretty good advice.)

  UNCLE DIEGO is my dad’s brother. He comes over a lot, usually to eat a meal with my family. I really like Uncle Diego. He’s funny, and he treats me like an adult, not like a little kid.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE MESS

  “Ew! This is DISGUSTING!” Monica yelled.

  She pulled a wad of chewed gum off one of the benches that lined the tree house walls. Then she brushed the dirt off the bench and sat down. She looked around.

  “This is the messiest the tree house has ever been, Claudia,” she said.

  Every few months, Monica and Becca came over to help me clean up my tree house.

  It wasn’t like I was bossing them around — the tree house was where we usually hung out. So it was their mess too. We all worked together to get the tree house clean.

  And Monica was right. The tree house was a trash heap.

  Becca wrinkled her nose. “It smells like garbage in here,” she said.

  I held up a mushy brown apple core. “It’s this,” I said. “I told Nick to throw it outside for the birds. He obviously didn’t.”

  Nick lived next door. He was a seven-year-old temper tantrum on legs. He never did what I told him, and he never picked up after himself.

  “That’s sick,” Monica said. “Toss it outside into your compost bin.”

  “How did this mess get so horrible and DISGUSTING?” Becca asked. She set down a bucket of cleaning supplies. “I thought we always cleaned up after we hang out up here.”

  “We usually do. But we’ve been too busy lately,” I said. “There hasn’t been any time.”

  It was true. We had been busy. But that was no excuse. The tree house was our favorite place to go. We should have been keeping it clean, even if we were busy.

  Ever since my big brother, Jimmy, decided he was too old for the tree house, it had been the place I went with my friends.

  When we were little, we played with dolls and drew pictures in the tree house.

  Now that we were teenagers, we gossiped, experimented with makeup, and studied in the tree house.

  It was where I went to get away when I needed time alone or wanted to do a craft project. And unfortunately, it was where Nick went when he wanted to drive me nuts. That was most of the time.

  “Let’s sort through some of this stuff,” I said. “We’ll throw some of it away and keep some of it.”

  Monica picked up a dirty sock. I was pretty sure that it belonged to Nick. “Toss this or keep it?” she asked.

  “Keep the SMELLY sock,” I said. “Nick won’t care that it’s gross.”

  “Let’s divide everything up,” Monica suggested. “That way we won’t accidentally recycle Nick’s sock.”

  Becca found a black marker in a big box of art supplies. She put Nick’s sock in a grocery bag. Then she wrote KEEP on the bag.

  She wrote COMPOST on another bag. I put the apple core inside.

  Finally, Becca marked two more bags with the words RECYCLE and TRASH.

  We filled the COMPOST bag with oak leaves, a peach pit, and another apple core. The RECYCLE bag got full fast, with homework papers, soda cans, and old magazines.

  Before I could put all of our old magazines in the bag, Becca stopped me. “Let’s look through this stack of magazines,” she said. “We can use some of them for art projects.”

  Monica and I sat down next to her.

  “So this is wh
ere I left it!” Monica said. She held up a copy of Horse Newsletter. That was her favorite magazine. “This issue has a list of must-have horse show gear. I wanted to keep it for when I get a horse. I thought it was gone!”

  “We should clean the tree house more often,” Becca joked. “We’d find all sorts of stuff we thought was gone forever!”

  We sorted through the rest of the magazines. Most of them went into the RECYCLE bag, but Becca put a few of them into one of the storage benches. Then she frowned.

  “What’s this?” she asked, holding up a plastic bag. Then she squealed and dropped it. “There’s a dead thing inside!” she yelled.

  “That’s Nick’s dried lizard,” I said. “He found it in Mom’s garden.” I put the lizard in the KEEP bag with Nick’s sock.

  Then I moved a pile of pillows. A gleam of color stuck between two pillows caught my eye. I blinked, looked closer, and gasped.

  “What’s wrong?” Becca asked.

  “Is that my picture?” I whispered.

  “You mean THE picture?” Monica asked.

  Becca crossed her fingers. “Please, be Claudia’s missing picture!” she said.

  “Is it?” Monica asked.

  I pulled it out. “Yes!” I yelled.

  Becca exhaled with relief. “Thank goodness,” she said, smiling.

  I stared at the picture with a goofy grin.

  The photo was one of my prized possessions. I had lost it, and I had been sure that I would NEVER see it again.

  Becca had taken it six months ago.

  One day, Principal Paul had sent us to the football field after school with a note for Coach Johnson.

  Brad Turino had walked over to talk to Coach while we waited for Coach to read the note from Principal Paul.

  The #1 Most Important Fact of My Life

  I have a mad, secret crush on Brad Turino, the best athlete, most gorgeous, nicest guy in Pine Tree Middle School.

  That day on the football field, Becca snapped a photo of Brad. In the picture, he was watching me the same way I watch him when he’s not looking: with adoring admiration.

  Of course, I was pretty sure Brad wasn’t really watching me. It just looked like he was for that one split second.

  I was HEARTBROKEN when I lost the picture. And Becca had deleted the file from her computer. We both felt awful.

  “Please put that picture in a safe place this time,” Becca told me.

  “And have some copies made,” Monica suggested.

  “I will,” I promised.

  Monica and Becca left when the tree house was clean. I carefully carried my Brad picture back to the house.

  As I was going inside, Jimmy bolted out the back door. We almost collided.

  “Watch out!” I yelled.

  Right away, I felt bad. I didn’t mean to yell. I just didn’t want my photo to get dirty or crumpled.

  Jimmy wasn’t annoyed, and he didn’t snap at me. He was bursting with excitement. “We’re getting a swimming pool!” he yelled.

  CHAPTER 2

  GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS

  Jimmy doesn’t make lists. If he did, teasing me would be #1 on his Top Ten Most Fun Things To Do. I knew better than to believe everything my brother said, so I was pretty sure he was lying about getting a pool.

  “That’s not FUNNY ,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t joke about getting a pool,” Jimmy said. He looked annoyed. “Dad brought home the plans. Go inside and see for yourself.”

  He wasn’t kidding. I whooped for joy and ran into the kitchen.

  Mom was mixing biscuit batter. “You have leaves in your hair, Claudia,” she told me.

  “We cleaned the tree house,” I said. Then I sat down at the counter. “Jimmy said we’re getting a pool.”

  “That’s right,” Mom said.

  “Fantastic!” I shouted. I giggled. I do that when I’m so happy it bubbles over. “So my friends and I can swim whenever we want?”

  Mom nodded. “Yes, but —”

  “I bet we’ll have lots of company,” I pointed out. “All our relatives will want to visit. And old friends you and Dad haven’t seen in years.”

  Mom sighed. “Yes, but —”

  I had a sudden, HORRIBLE thought. I looked up sharply. “My bathing suit is faded and worn out!”

  It was worn out, but it was also too little-kiddish. I didn’t want a suit with little pink hearts on it anymore.

  “Can I get a new one?” I pleaded. “Please, can I?”

  Mom smiled. “Yes, but —”

  “Thanks!” I said. I jumped up, grabbed my picture of Brad, and ran out. Monica and Becca would flip when I told them. I just had to decide how and when to break the news.

  Method #1: The Blurt Out

  Response: Squeals of surprise and delight.

  Upside: A rush of super satisfaction.

  Downside: The thrill is over too fast.

  Method #2: Hint With Drawn-Out Suspense

  Response: Worried demands to tell all.

  Upside: Anticipation and total power.

  Downside: Friends get mad before they get glad again.

  Method #3: The Big Deal Event

  Response: Excited pleas to tell; happy to wait.

  Upside: Fun before and after the big, dramatic reveal!

  Downside: None.

  Method #3 was the best. If I didn’t blab the instant Monica answered her phone.

  Uncle Diego was watching TV in the living room. He came over for dinner a lot, so I figured he was just waiting to see if we were having something good that night.

  “Hey, Claudia. Is your mom making dinner yet?” he asked.

  “Yes, she’s working on it,” I said. “Have you seen Dad anywhere?”

  “He’s in the den with his pool plans,” Uncle Diego said. “I’m really excited that you guys are getting a pool. I can’t wait! Your house is going to be the place to be this summer.”

  “I know. I’m excited too,” I told him. Then I hurried down the hall to my dad’s den. The door was closed.

  I paused for a second to calm down. My dad HATED it when people babbled.

  I always babbled when I was:

  Nervous

  Scared

  Excited

  I was really excited about the pool!

  I took a deep breath. Then I started to knock, but I totally lost my cool. Instead of knocking, I just BURST through the door and threw my arms around Dad’s neck.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I yelled, hugging him. “I never thought we’d get a pool, not in a million gazillion years. I’m so happy I could explode!”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” Dad said.

  Was he being funny? I wasn’t sure. Dad almost never joked, and he wasn’t smiling.

  I forced myself to calm down. I stopped jumping and just j
iggled with excitement.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” I asked. “We are really getting a pool?”

  “Yes, it’s true,” Dad said. “I picked up the plans today. However —”

  However = But = the bad part of something good.

  What could be bad about getting a pool? I held my breath.

  Dad sighed. Then he looked me in the eye and said, “We have to cut down the tree-house-tree to make room for a swimming pool.”

  CHAPTER 3

  THE GOODBYE BEGINS

  Dad’s words hit hard.

  Like Nick had karate-kicked me.

  Like Jenny Pinski had STOMPED me.

  Like all my friends had dumped me to become best friends with Anna Dunlap.

  Only the hurt was a thousand times worse.

  I didn’t cry. Dad hated crying more than babbling. I excused myself and ran outside. Then I burst into tears.