Nanny X Returns Read Free

handed the night crawlers to me.
    â€œNo, thanks,” I said.
    â€œI know they’re not your cup of tea, Alison,” said Nanny X, which made me think about night crawlers squirmingaround in a teacup, which was disgusting. “Why don’t you try tying some flies?”
    Flies sounded even worse than worms. But instead of handing me a tub of flies, Nanny X reached into a tackle box and handed me a book:
Fly-Tying for Beginners
by Buzz Bachelder. Then she handed me a bag of feathers, a hook, a gripper-thingy and a spool of thick black thread. The idea was to tie the feathers to the hook and make it look like a real insect. Only none of the flies in the book looked like insects I’d seen before. They were fun to tie, though. I started with yellow and orange feathers, and wound the thread around them. It was a great way to practice my knot-tying, which is something I do to keep from biting my fingernails. Also, the flies were kind of cute.
    Jake and I took turns helping Nanny X paddle. We paused on the other side of the island, and she reached into the diaper bag and pulled out a bottle of baby powder. When she turned the end with the holes in it, no puffs of powder came out. Instead, the bottom of the bottle opened to reveal a lens. A baby-powder spyglass. She peered into the trees of Roosevelt Island. Then she passed the glass to me. It was crystal clear—not like regular binoculars, where you can never get the focus right. I didn’t see anything suspicious, though.
    The sky was brighter as we moved the canoe downstream toward the Tidal Basin and into deeper water. White clouds floated like marshmallows, toasted by the sun.
    Nanny X took one of my flies, a blue one, and added it to her hat. It was like when my parents put one of my drawings on the refrigerator. Eliza sat on the bottom of the boat, babbling and scribbling in a coloring book.
    â€œWhen I go fishing with Ethan,” Jake said, “I catch something.”
    He had a point. I hadn’t even seen many ripples in the water. Oh, the water moved, and you could see the current and feel it as it tugged our boat downstream. But those little ripples you’re supposed to see when a fish comes up for air or a turtle ducks his head underwater? Nothing.
    We spotted some boaters upstream and Nanny X held the spyglass to her sunglasses. I could tell even without the spyglass that they didn’t look like the sort of people who had just threatened the president with a nine-foot fish sculpture. It made me wonder if the White House got other strange threats, like:
Sign this law or I’ll hit you with a salami
.
    Then I heard a
bloop
, like the sound the water drops make when the sink is leaking. I saw a ripple.
    â€œThere!” I pointed. “A fish.”
    â€œI don’t see anything.” Jake moved to the front of the boat, where Yeti was perched, and stood up to get a better view.
    Yeti must have seen something in the water, too, because his nose was pointed right at the ripple.
    The canoe rocked back and forth. Jake held up his fishing rod like he was on a tightrope and that was the pole he needed for balance.
    Then the canoe hit a rush of water. We bounced, like we were going over a speed bump. The canoe turned sideways.
    â€œ
Weeeee
,” yelled Eliza.
    My brother yelled, too. He dropped his fishing pole and tumbled over the side of the canoe, right into the Potomac.
    â€œJake!” My brother swims about as well as a copper sculpture of a fish. “Jake!”
    Yeti jumped in after him, because he’s pretty much the best dog in the world. But the current snatched them both, and they drifted down the middle of the river.

4. Jake
Nanny X Gets Some Help from a Purple Minnow

    My friend Ethan has four survival guides, so when he got a fifth one he gave it to me. That’s why I knew I wasn’t drowning. The survival guide says that when people drown, they don’t scream. I was screaming.