Free Edward Is Only a Fish by Alan Sincic Page A

walking shorts disappeared beneath the water. Blub-blub, blub-blub. Down went Mr. B’s eagle-feather war bonnet from Buffalo Gap, South Dakota. Blub-blub, blub-blub, blub-blub. One by one, the portraits of Mr. Billingsly’s parents and grandparents and great-grandparents held their noses and leaped into the rising water.
    By and by, even Mr. B’s cats began to notice the change in the weather.
    â€œMeeeeooow!… eeeoow … eeeoow-eow-ow-ow-ow!”
    They skittered across the top of Edward’s fishbowl— zip zip zip zip, fourteen in a row—and then landed, hissing and spitting, high up in the branches of Mr. Billingsly’s silver-plated hat rack. Edward wondered why they were so upset. He wondered what could be chasing them. The only thing that he could see was a few pieces of furniture floating across the living-room floor.
    Ta-tat, ta-tat, ta-tat … ta-tat, ta-tat, ta-tat …
    Edward wheeled around. It was Mr. B’s covered-wagon kite, already half underwater, rattling back and forth against the garden window. Edward pressed his face against the walls of his fishbowl and smiled. He knew what this was about. The kite was trying to break out into the sky on the other side of the glass. It was trying to take itself out for a little vacation.
    Ta-tat-tat-tat.
    The water poured into every corner of the house, into every socket of every pocket, every lock and every locket, every cranny, every nook, every page of every book. It poured into the thimbles and into the pots. It danced across the countertops and shimmied up the windowpanes and giggled its way down into the cracks between the floorboards. At last it rumbled up over the top of the fishbowl.
    â€œKi-yi-yippee-kai-yay!” cried Edward as he shot straight up toward the ceiling. He looked like a balloon when you cut the string and it shoots straight up into the sky.
    He scurried to the piano and bounced along the keys. “I can play whatever I want!”
    He crashed into Mr. Billingsly’s jar of cherry jelly beans and snatched them up as they fell. “I can eat whatever I want!”
    He flew from one end of the house to the other with a snip and a snap of his tail. “I can swim wherever I want!”
    Far above him chugged the telephone like a tugboat out to sea. “I am a dolphin,” hummed Edward, “scooting quick across the bay.”
    Far below him rolled the hills and the valleys of Mr. B’s electric train set. “I am an eagle,” cried Edward, “sweeping tall across the sky!”
    Alongside the track was a small brown box with a glimmer of light underneath it. Down Edward swooped. It was … no, it wasn’t a box. It was a station for the trains, a tidy little station house with a porch and a swing, and a cow and a stable, and a tidy little man dealing cards upon a table. Edward imagined that the tiny stationmaster was Mr. Billingsly, begging for someone to build him a larger house.
    â€œI am bigger than you, little man,” said Edward. “I am the biggest of the big, and if you want a bigger house, then you are just going to have to—”
    Rinnng! Rinnng!
    â€œPardon me. My phone is ringing.”
    Edward darted over to pick it up. Maybe it was the mayor of Boston, home of the Boston Cooler, calling to congratulate him on his vacation.
    â€œEdward?” said Mr. Billingsly. “Is that you, Edward?”
    His voice sounded funny, as if he were trying to gargle and talk at the same time. “Stay calm, Edward. Don’t panic! Go into the bathroom and pull out the plug. Pull out the plug in the bathtub.”
    Mr. B was right. The important thing was to stay calm. On his way over to the refrigerator to fix himself a bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate coconut sprinkles and half a teaspoon of butterscotch topping, Edward thought about the tub.
    â€œEdward? Do you hear me, Edward?”
    On his way back from the refrigerator Edward