Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things Read Free Page A

had a pin sticking right through its body. They’d been mounted to look like they were in flight, but they were stabbed, straight through the heart.
    Gary emerged from the closet and caught me staring at his collection. “My uncle got me started a couple of years ago.”
    â€œGot you started?” Cricket asked. “He gave you his whole collection!”
    â€œSo?” He turned back to me. “I’ve traded up a lot. Some of them are pretty valuable.”
    â€œThey are not,” Cricket said with a scowl. “That’s just what your Internet buddies say.”
    Gary blushed, but he came back fighting. “Oh, now you’re an expert on my collection? Like you know anything about it?” From the main compartment of his backpack he pulled out a small Super Soaker, a bright red rubbery football, and a pair of Rollerblades. Then he started emptying miscellaneous things from the side pockets, saying, “When I get my hands on a four-eyed viper-wing, you’ll envy me all the way to the bank.”
    â€œA four-eyed viperwing,” Cricket said with a snort. “Right.”
    He threw his sister a pimply-faced sneer, then handed his backpack over to me. “It’s sorta thrashed, but . . .” His voice trailed off as he gave a shrug. Like, what can I say?
    â€œThanks. I’ll take good care of it.”
    â€œI wouldn’t notice if you didn’t.” He sat back down in front of his computer. “Not that that’s an invitation to thrash it worse . . .” And we were just starting to leave the dungeon when he asked, “Where you guys going, anyway?”
    â€œVista Ridge.”
    He turned back to his computer. “Dodo safari, huh?”
    Cricket spun to face him. “It is not a dodo safari! Dodos are extinct—condors are on their way
back
from extinction.” She frowned at him. “Just because you’ve given up doesn’t mean I have to.”
    Gary was ignoring her, typing like crazy at his keyboard as he muttered, “I wonder what a dodo would be worth. Can you imagine if you had one of those?”
    â€œYou don’t live in the real world anymore, Gary.”
    He opened one of the dodo bird links that had popped up on his monitor and read, “‘The last known stuffed dodo bird was destroyed in a 1755 fire at a museum in Oxford, England, leaving only partial skeletons and drawings—’”
    â€œHello . . . ? Gary . . . ? You’re researching
dodos
? You need to get away from that computer!”
    He clicked on a link and said, “You’re not my mom,” as another page flew open.
    Cricket’s face went stony for just a second, then she said, “But you know Mom wouldn’t want you living like this! She’d want you to—”
    â€œTime for you to go,” he said.
    â€œBut she—”
    â€œGO!”
    Cricket grabbed the backpack from me and muttered, “Fine,” and marched out of his bedroom, up the hall, and into her own bedroom, which was not even remotely dungeon-like. It was tidy and sunny and felt like . . .springtime.
    Cricket, though, was like a dark cloud, storming around inside it. “Mom would
hate
that he spends all his time like that. We were always outdoors before. Always
together.
We used to go up to Vista Ridge all the time—to camp, or just to picnic and watch for condors.” The storm cloud started to cry. “Now he lives on the Internet, Dad is always at work. . . . It’s like the whole family died when she did.”
    I felt so helpless. I mean, what can you say to that? And maybe my own home situation isn’t the greatest—I have an absentee mom and an unknown dad—but neither of them’s
dead.
    Well, maybe my dad is, but from the way my mom and Grams won’t discuss him, I don’t think so.
    But
anyway.
I barely knew this girl, and all of a sudden I’m in her house, borrowing her stuff, finding out