Free Katy Kelly_Lucy Rose 01 by Lucy Rose: Here's the Thing About Me Page B

that the door to it has been screwed shut since they remade the kitchen so Pop got a crows bar and a screwdriver and a hammer and he and my mom started to try to unwind the screws to open the door and Pop called out, “How is it down there?” in his echoing voice.
    And Melonhead yelled back, “It's small.”“I'll bet,” Pop said.
    Then Melonhead shouted back, “I guess you really had to be a dumb waiter to ride in this thing.”
    Pop didn't tell him that before now only food rode in it because it might make him frantic to realize he was the first human to do it.
    Madam and Jonique and I went back to the basement in case the dumbwaiter got unstuck and came back down again. Then someone would be waiting for Melonhead when he got out. After a while we could hear Pop yelling down, “Only one screw left to go!”
    And then Adam Melon started yelling at the top of his lungs, “I see him!”
    For just one second I forgot who him was andthen Melonhead shouted, “I am shining my flashlight right on him!”“You are?” Jonique shouted. “For real?”“Yep. Jake is just sitting in the in-between looking at me,” Melonhead yelled.
    I was hardly breathing from my nerves. “Is he near or far?” I hollered.“Near. I'm putting my arm through the slot. I'm touching fur!”
    Then I was hardly breathing from happiness.
    We could hear him say, “Come here, Jake.”
    And then he said, “No! No! Wrong way.”“Which wrong way?” Jonique screamed.“He's going up through the floor where a pipe is,” Melonhead said.
    Jonique and I and Madam ran back up from the basement to the hall by the back staircase where we could hear scritching in the wall and it was getting higher and my mom came out from the kitchen and said, “It sounds like Jake is climbing up the pipes to the upstairs bathroom.”
    So we all except for Pop ran up there and my mom was right because we could hear him jumping around inside the wall that is right over the door of

    Madam's fancy bathroom that has the morning glory wallpaper and the old-time bathtub with golden faucets. And my mom said, “I think he fell in and is stuck there because I doubt there is any way for him to go up or out.”
    So I ran down the back stairs to the kitchen and pulled on Pop's arm and said, “Hurry, Pop. Jake needs you upstairs.”
    But Pop said, “Children first.”
    Then he pushed the screwdriver underneath the dumbwaiter door and banged it with the hammer until it made a sound like SWAK and flew open. But inside the dumbwaiter looked empty except for rope. And then I was scared. “Don't tell me we've lost him, too,” I said to Pop.
    But Pop pulled on the rope and up came the dumbwaiter and out came Melonhead. I NEVER thought I'd be glad to see him but actually I was. Very. Then I asked him, “Were you scared?”
    And he said, “I had the time of my life.”
    So Melonhead and I took the chisel and the hammer but left the crows bar because we did not need it Pop said and went all up to the bathroom and my mom showed Pop where she thoughtJake was trapped and Madam got a chair for Pop to stand on and Mom got a shoe box from Madam's closet. Then Pop said, “I need room. Everybody has to stand in the bathtub except for Lucy Rose because she is my assistant and it's her job to hold the box.”
    Then Pop stood on the chair and put the bathroom cup sideways on the wall and put his ear on the bottom of it so he could listen. “Something is in there and I hope it's a guinea pig,” he said.
    Then he took the chisel and the hammer and started tapping out a hole in the wall that was about as big as an Oreo and when he finished he said, “Someone give me some guinea pig food.”
    We all turned to Melonhead but all he said was, “Oops!”
    It turned out that while he was stuck in the dumbwaiter he was feeling like he was hungry so he ate Jake's food which even my mom said was so gross but he said, “It wasn't so bad. It tasted sort of like oatmeal, if you mixed sand in