Nanny X Returns Read Free Page B

X admitted.
    â€œWe report the same,” Boris said. Nanny X got a little friendlier after that.
    â€œBut
why
isn’t anything out here?” Stinky asked. “That’s just wrong.” Stinky is very concerned about the environment. Not seeing any live fish probably bugged him a lot more than not seeing The Angler.
    â€œAli saw a ripple, before I fell in,” I said. I thought that might cheer him up.
    â€œIt’s true,” Ali said. “Jake’s splash scared whatever it was. But there was something out there.”
    â€œDare. Dare!” Eliza pointed. We looked, but we didn’t see anything. Eliza puffed up her cheeks and blew out a breath. If she were a grown-up, it would have been a sigh. Then she went back to her coloring book while Nanny X and Boris talked about which parts of the river they’d covered and wasn’t it nice to be working together again? And did anyone happen to see a suspicious-looking character on shore with a sketchpad or maybe a blowtorch?
    No one had.
    Eliza ripped a page out of her coloring book.
    â€œEliza,” Ali said. “That’s not how we treat books.”
    Eliza held up a picture of a mouse wearing overalls and balled it up, like a baseball. She inherited that from me.
    I looked at Stinky, who was talking about healthy rivers, and at Nanny X, who kept saying, “Yes, but what’s the motive?”
    â€œFame?” said Boris.
    â€œThe Angler is anonymous,” said Nanny X.
    â€œThe Angler is pseudonymous,” said Boris. “A person can be known by a pseudonym.
You
are known by a pseudonym.”
    â€œPseudonym,” which is a name someone uses in place of their real name, would be a good reading-connection word, but I was too wet to write that one down.
    â€œMaybe there’s a political point,” said Nanny X.
    â€œMaybe the artist is making a statement that if we don’t take better care of our rivers, the fish are going to end up on dry land,” said Stinky.
    â€œActually,” I told him, “some fish can survive on dryland. Like mudskippers and the climbing gourami.” I don’t think you’d find a climbing gourami on the White House lawn, though; they live in Africa and parts of Asia.
    â€œPish!” said Eliza. She was holding my fishing pole.
    â€œEliza,” Ali said, “be careful of the hook. It’s sharp!”
    â€œSarp!” Eliza said. She took the hook and put her coloring-book paper on there.
Ppppping
. She dropped the line into the water.
    Then, all of a sudden, the line went straight. I’d been fishing enough times with Ethan to know what that meant.
    The flies hadn’t worked. Neither had Weinrib’s Canadian Night Crawlers. But somehow a piece of soggy coloring-book paper
had
worked. My baby sister had caught a fish.

5. Alison
Nanny X Reels One In

    Eliza had no idea what to do with that fish. She didn’t even realize she’d caught one. For all she knew, there was a sea monster on the end of that line. Or a cantaloupe. She puckered her lips and her eyebrows got all wavy as the fishing rod bent toward the water.
    â€œPull, Eliza,” I said. “Pull it up.”
    But I guess all of that movement on the end of the line was too scary.
    â€œBad,” Eliza said, as the end of the pole dipped down and the reel started spinning. Eliza threw the rod on the floor of the canoe.
    Nanny X snatched it up and turned the handle. I suppose I should stop being surprised when Nanny X moves quickly. It’s like a snake stalking a mouse: slow, slow, and then
bam
.
    Jake leaned over the side of the canoe—hadn’t helearned his lesson?—and reported on her progress like a sports announcer.
    â€œIt’s moving through the water. It’s almost here. Closer. Closer. I can see it!”
    And then so could we. Nanny X reached down and grabbed the line with her hand. She pulled a gleaming fish out of the