Free Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul by Jack Canfield Page A

back.”
    I sat in bewilderment and glanced back one last time, but he simply wasn’t there.
    “In the very back, with the luggage?”
    “No, just the ba . . . ”
    Screeeech!
    The car roared to a sudden stop, followed by a 180-degree turn that sent us back the way we’d come. Mom had looked in the back and confirmed my suspicions. Dad was missing!
    Mom frantically questioned each of us about whether we knew the location of our missing father—first my younger brother, then me, then Jesse. Jesse had been reading through all this excitement, but he suddenly awakened to the panic.
    Calmly he remarked, “Don’t worry. He told me to tell you he was going to the bathroom and he’d be right back.” My mother pointed out that we had left the rest area half an hour ago. Jesse just blinked.
    An hour after we had left the rest stop, we picked up our now freezing father. He had been trying to keep warm by pressing the blow-dryer in the bathroom over and over again.
    Dad spent the rest of the trip wide awake.
    And did we make it to the airport on time for our flight? Absolutely. The plane had been delayed because of a bomb threat. Were we shocked or surprised? Naaaw. It was all part of our typical family vacations.
    Jason Damazo, age 12

Terror on Route 83
    “ Rodney! Where is Aunt Emily?” Jenny asked for the third time as she walked into the living room drying her hair.
    Rodney kept his eyes glued to the video screen. “How am I supposed to know? Jennifer! ” He really hated it when his sister called him “Rodney.” That’s why he had ignored her the first two times when she had asked him about Aunt Emily.
    “C’mon, Rod!” Jenny was getting concerned enough to plead a little. “I asked you to watch Aunt Em while I took a shower.”
    “You did?” he asked, offering her his best “who, me?” look.
    “Rod, please! When I got into the shower, she was in the kitchen cleaning the sink—like she does at least ten times every day. Now she’s gone!” Jenny was moving around the room looking out all the windows.
    “Honest, I dunno, Jen,” Rod answered, pulling himself up off of his elbows. “I don’t remember you asking me to watch her.”
    “I can’t find her anywhere and Mom should be home from the dentist in less than an hour,” Jenny wailed.
    “Where do you think she would go?” he asked.
    “I don’t know!” Jenny said. “But we have to find her. She could get hurt or something.” Now Jenny was sounding borderline frantic.
    Rod raced to the back door. Aunt Emily’s blue fall coat was hanging on a hook right next to his faded jean jacket. “Jenny, look!” he said. “We’d better take her coat.”
    As he opened the back door, a gust of cold November wind whooshed into the house. “Aunt Em could get really sick if she’s outside too long,” Jenny said.
    “You check the yard and the garage. I’ll go down the block. She might have tried going to the beach again,” Rod said as he took off running.
    Rod and Jenny lived five miles from the closest beach, but Aunt Emily grew up living only a block away from Rainbow Beach in Chicago. A few months ago she had slipped out of the back door with her bathrobe on. She said that it was her beach jacket and that she was going for a little dip.
    Aunt Emily was Grandma Berniece’s oldest sister. Rod used to have fun with Aunt Emily because she had been an elementary school teacher for forty years. She definitely understood kids. Whenever she used to come to visit, they would play Monopoly. Aunt Emily had been the best Monopoly player Rod had ever met. Lately though, she hadn’t been able to play Monopoly at all because she couldn’t remember the rules, and then she would get upset.
    Aunt Emily forgot things on a regular basis—like where she was or what day it was. The doctor said she had Alzheimer’s disease. She didn’t look sick or anything, but she said weird things and sometimes she didn’t know who Rod and Jenny were. One day when Rod came home