I LEAN OVER the side of the catamaran and peer into the crystal blue water. This is my last chance, I think.
“I hope you find one today, Alexa,” Dad says, as if reading my thoughts.
“Me, too,” my brother, Jonah, says. “I want to see one, too!”
I lift my head up, turn toward Jonah, and glare. Why, why, why does he always insist on following me everywhere, doing everything I do? Make your own friends, I want to scream at him. Find your own green sea turtle!
But I don’t say it. I don’t say anything. Ever since Jonah was a little kid and they discovered the reason he acts so different is because he has autism, I’ve been trained to make allowances for him. Trained to put up with a lot.
Like, for instance, having to go to the airport weeks before this vacation to “practice” taking a trip on an airplane. My family, and other families with kids like Jonah, had to go through the whole drill—carry luggage (empty, of course), stand in lines (waiting for what, exactly?)—all to board a plane that would never leave the ground.
“Alexa,” my mother had said while I sighed and groaned throughout the entire pointless exercise, “if we ever hope to take that six-hour flight to the Virgin Islands, we have to get Jonah used to the idea. Otherwise, the trip could go very badly.”
The practice must have worked because we all survived the real flight two weeks later, even though Jonah acted totally embarrassingly. He did a lot of hand flapping and looking over his seat to ask the man behind us a million weird questions over and over again, like had he ever ridden a camel. At least Jonah didn’t scream.
Esta historia es de la edición July/August 2017 de Cricket Magazine for Kids.
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Esta historia es de la edición July/August 2017 de Cricket Magazine for Kids.
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The Tale Of Paddy Ahern
THERE ONCE WAS a lad named Paddy Ahern who trod the green hills of Limerick, Ireland, offering to help farmers with their chores in return for food and lodging.
The Pedestrians
EACH TIME HELGA Estby looked over her shoulder, the big cat was there. Crossing Wyoming’s Red Desert on foot, in the dust and heat of August 1896, was tough.
The Magic Gifts
A Basque Folk Tale
The Dragon's Scales
“THREE YEARS I'VE been waiting, when Torquil promised he’d return them in three days. I’m not waiting three more days to get back what’s mine!” The dragon punctuated his remarks with a smoky snort and a lashing tail.
The Water Bucketre
A Chinese Folk Tale.
Between The Pages
One rainy night, while alone in the castle library with her talking gargoyle, Marcus, Princess Audrey finds a book with the odd title Finding Angel. Meanwhile, in modern times, a girl named Angel is celebrating her thirteenth birthday.
Swim Buddies
I LEAN OVER the side of the catamaran and peer into the crystal blue water. This is my last chance, I think.
The Bushwhackers
I CAN’T ABIDE living one more day in this pigpen!” I groaned and rolled out of bed to pull on my dress.
As American as Appleless Pie!
NOTHING IS MORE American than the humble apple pie. There’s even an old saying to prove it: “as American as apple pie.” So it may come as a surprise that many early settlers who forged the trails of our expanding nation were often without apples to make this most American of desserts. As pioneers headed west in pursuit of territory and gold, they had to leave many things behind, including apples. Not only did life on the trail make fresh fruit like apples hard to carry and keep, apple trees were native only to the east coast, which made finding apples in the West nearly impossible.
The Man Who Built A Better Leg
THE CIVIL WAR was only a few weeks old when seven hundred and fifty Confederate recruits gathered in the fields around Philippi, Virginia. It was early June 1861, and as yet there had been no real battles. The men had eagerly volunteered, but most had no training as soldiers. Their only weapons were the ones they brought from home— old-fashioned flintlock muskets, cap and ball pistols, and a few shotguns.
