Free Cloudy with a Chance of Boys by Megan McDonald Page A

give up,” she said to me.
    “Don’t worry. Dad’s hardly listening. I can still hear him rifling through stuff. There’s, like, a million boxes in that props closet.”
    “Stevie, um, asked me to come over. Not Alex. Alex didn’t ask me. Yep. It was Stevie.”
    “Me?” I exclaimed. “Thanks a lot. Don’t go blaming me, little sister.”
    “Uh-huh,” said Dad, still half listening. “What did she want?”
    “She, um, she, well, she . . . made you a sandwich!”
    What!
    “Great. What kind?”
    “What kind? Technically, I’m not sure.”
    “Doesn’t matter. I’ll take it, whatever it is.”
    “You know, funny thing is, I forgot to bring it over. So, I’m just going to go back over there, to the house I mean, and get it. And then I’ll come back over here. So, I’ll be back.”
    “Are you sure you’re okay?” Dad.
    “I’m sure. I’m just going to go now.”
    “Okay, I’ll just be a little while longer, if anybody needs me, you know where to find me. I’ll wait till they’re done practicing in here and then I’ll lock up.”
    “Can I go out there, Dad?”
    “Not today, honey. I don’t think Mr. Cannon would like us interrupting practice.”
    “How about if . . . can I just take a peek from backstage? I’ll stay behind the curtain.”
    “Sure. I don’t see why not.”
    Silence. More rustling. More crackling.
    Alex held up the monitor and we glued our ears to it, trying to hear. But all we could hear was a lot of rustling and clomping and crackling and static.
    Somebody coughed.
    “What’s happening now? Do you think it died?” asked Alex.
    “It didn’t die,” I told her. “I just heard a cough.”
    “What cough? Who coughed? Was it a guy cough?” Alex asked.
    “How should I know a guy cough from a girl cough?”
    “Well, you know, was it deep like a man teacher’s do you think? Or was it just, you know, heh-heh, like a younger person?”
    “You’re seriously warped, you know that.”
    “Why can’t we hear anything? It’s not working. Do you think Joey bumped it? Or turned it off or something? What if she put it behind the curtain, like I told her, and now we can’t hear.”
    “Take a chill pill. Just wait till Joey gets back. She’ll tell us what’s going on.”
    Alex started biting her fingernails. I pulled her hand away and she stuck her tongue out at me.
    “This is so cool,” I said. “It’s kind of like that Hitchcock movie.”
    “The one where they have a chase scene on Mount Rushmore?” she asked. “Or the one where millions of birds attack people? Wait, it’s the one where the creepy guy has a skeleton in the basement, huh?”
    “ Psycho ? You’re psycho. I meant the one where the guy is holed up in this room in a wheelchair. All he does is stare out the window all day. And he thinks he sees a murderer in the building next door. So he sends somebody over there to find out.”
    “The only murder around here is going to be Joey’s if she doesn’t get back here soon.”
    Just then, Joey Reel, Her Royal Spyness, burst into the room with a mud-streaked face and a hole in her jeans.
    “What happened to you?” I asked.
    “Stevie. Hurry. Quick. You have to make Dad a sandwich!”

It had been three days. Three days of listening in on play practice with the baby monitor. Three days of watching Alex mouth the words as Scott Towel and Jayden struggled through their lines.
    Joey yawned. “Why do they call it eavesdropping? Why not ears-dropping? My ears are dropping off. Even kissing would not be this boring.”
    “Shh! Joey! I can’t hear,” said Alex.
    “So? All they ever do is go, ‘perchance, perforce, blah-blah. Anon! Anon!’”
    “Yeah, how come we never get to hear Scott Towel and Jayden say stuff to each other?” I asked. “Un-Shakespeare stuff, I mean.” I could hear Shakespeare anytime, but I never got to spy on a boy and girl talking before.
    “Because they’re practicing for a play? How should I know? Maybe they talk to each other