Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things Read Free

what I was getting into, we were inside the house and I was being introduced to a woman with long salt-and-pepper hair wearing an oversized T-shirt and baggy jeans.
    â€œSammy, this is my leader, Robin Terrane. Robin, this is Sammy Keyes!
The
Sammy I’ve told you about? And guess what! She’s coming with us!” She hesitated. “If that’s all right?” But before Robin could say a thing, Cricket barreled ahead. “She doesn’t have any supplies, so we need to borrow a sleeping bag and a pad, and maybe some utensils and stuff. I have everything else at home! What do you say? Is it all right?”
    Cricket was chirping so fast and Robin was giving me such a sharp once-over that I felt more like an item up for auction than a kid gathering camping gear. Then Cricket added, “She’ll do great, I promise! Sammy’s tough! Ask Coach Rothhammer. Sammy plays catcher for her!”
    Robin’s eyebrows went up. “Catcher, huh?” She finally smiled and said, “Well, why not?” and led us to her garage. “Take what you need. I’ll get the forms.”
    Cricket rummaged through the garage like it was her own, and in less than five minutes we had a down sleeping bag, a thin pad of dense foam, a plate, a cup, and utensils, plus medical release papers and a permission slip from Robin.
    â€œSix-thirty a.m., right here. Don’t be late!” Robin said as we left with her stuff through the roll-up garage door. The door was halfway closed when suddenly it stopped and went back up. “Don’t be early, either!”
    Cricket called, “I know, I know! Sorry!”
    I eyed her as we zipped up the sidewalk. “You’ve been early for a six-thirty start time?”
    She laughed. “I get excited.”
    This was definitely an understatement. And on the long walk back to her house, she seemed to get even more wound up, chattering a million miles an hour about Robin and her daughter, Bella, who’s best friends with some girl named Gabby who both go to Bruster, which is our rival junior high.
    And
then
she went on and on about Robin’s nephew, Quinn—how smart and strong and passionate about condors he is—until finally she wound down with, “He knows everything about the wilderness, Sammy. Everything!” She let out a dreamy sigh. “He’s amazing.”
    Her cheeks were all rosy, and she was practically skipping down the sidewalk. “And cute, too?” I asked with a smirk.
    She blushed. “You have no idea.”
    There was a white pickup truck parked in the driveway of Cricket’s house, and when she saw it, she said, “Oh, good. Gary’s still home.”
    Gary turned out to be her brother. Sixteen or seventeen, round face, lots of acne, and hair shooting out all over the place. He looked like a pimply porcupine that had had its quills dipped in black ink.
    â€œHey!” Cricket said, leaning into his dungeon of a bedroom. “Can we borrow your backpack?”
    The minute it registered that there were intruders in the dungeon, Gary shrank the page on his computer quick. “Huh?”
    â€œYou haven’t been out of this room all day, have you?” Cricket asked, stepping inside it.
    He ignored the question and asked one of his own. “Who’s your friend?”
    He was talking about me, but he sure wasn’t looking at me.
    â€œHer name’s Sammy. Can she borrow your backpack?”
    Now
he looked at me. For all of a nanosecond.
    â€œSure.” He got up and started rooting around his closet, and that’s when I noticed that his dungeon walls were decorated with—not swords or shields or random medieval weapons—no, they were covered in
butterflies.
Cases and cases of real butterflies.
    Well, real
dead
ones, anyway.
    There were small ones, big ones, colorful ones, plain ones . . . and at first I thought it was kind of neat, but then I noticed that every one of them