Free The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall

lesson. Good-bye, everyone.”
    She left with Mr. Penderwick shaking his head. “Either a saint or a master criminal. But how are my girls? How was school? How was Goldie’s? Tell me everything while I fix dinner.”
             
    After dinner, Rosalind told her sisters she’d do their kitchen cleanup chores. She wanted them out of the way before Anna called, since it was going to be hard enough to carry on a sham conversation without everyone watching. Batty gladly retreated to the living room with Hound to play King of the Mountain on the red wagon. Skye and Jane not so gladly went upstairs to their room, for though it was great to skip cleanup, that only meant starting homework sooner.
    They settled down at their desks. Skye flew through a book report on
Swallows and Amazons,
filed it neatly in her notebook, then pulled out a fresh piece of paper and wrote
The Stupid Aztecs
across the top. Her play was due at the end of the week, and she had to buckle down and write it, whether she wanted to or not.
    The phone rang downstairs.
    “That’s Anna,” said Skye. She had a sudden urge to warn her father before there was no going back.
    Jane looked as cold feet–ish as Skye felt. “We’re about to be caught in a web of lies and deceit, and lose our honor and integrity forever.”
    “I know.”
    A minute later, Rosalind stuck her head in the door. “Daddy and I are going to the rink, and Batty and Hound are coming with us. Wish us luck.”
    “Luck,” said Jane as Rosalind withdrew.
    Pondering the meaning of luck, Skye tipped her chair back and to the side until it rested on one leg. In mathematics, she thought, luck doesn’t exist, only random chance. If there were such a thing as luck, fathers would never go on dates, and Melissa Patenaude would never have been born or would at least live in another state, and it would be possible to balance on one leg of the chair with both feet off the ground. She lifted one foot, then both. Crash!
    “If you keep doing that, you’ll crack your head open and only I will be here to listen to your dying confession,” said Jane.
    “I don’t have anything to confess.” Skye picked herself and her chair up off the floor. “Except that I wish I’d never had the idea about finding awful dates for Daddy, and the Aztecs bore me, and writing a play about them bores me so much I can hardly stand it.”
    “You’re supposed to write a play about the Aztecs? Lucky you.”
    There it was, luck again, thought Skye. What would she really want, if she was to be lucky? To visit Jeffrey in Boston. To have someone else write her Aztec play. She looked over at Jane, who was bent over her desk, scribbling on a piece of paper. Maybe she’d finally settled on a science essay topic. Skye picked up her binoculars and found that by standing on her chair and focusing on Jane’s desk, she could read the scribbling.
    I hate science essays. I hate science essays. I hate science essays. I hate…
    “Jane,” she said, climbing down from the chair. “Remember last year when I built that model wind tower for you and you wrote those poems for me?”
    “And you said you’d never switch homework assignments with me again.”
    “For good reason. My teacher had a hard time believing I wrote
Tra-la the joy of tulips blooming, Ha-ha the thrill of bumblebees zooming. I’m alive and I dance, I’m alive though death is always looming.
When I finally convinced her that I had, she asked me if I needed to talk to the school counselor.”
    “Humph.” Jane couldn’t stand anything that sounded like criticism of her writing.
    “Anyway, maybe I shouldn’t have said I’d never switch with you again.”
    Jane didn’t answer, and Skye went back to trying to balance on one leg of her chair without any feet on the floor. She figured that if she did crack her head open, at least she’d get out of writing the play.
    “I’m truly interested in the Aztecs,” said Jane after a while.
    Skye let her chair bang