Free Nanny X Returns by Madelyn Rosenberg

the squirrel.
    My mind flashed back to the woman who’d been playingthe video game outside the museum. Only now I was pretty sure it wasn’t a video game. And I was pretty sure of something else, too: The woman was Ursula.
    This time she hadn’t left us an almost decent rhyming note, but maybe that was because she hadn’t had the chance yet. The Angler was on the move. And so were we.

16. Jake
Nanny X Learns Some History

    The squirrel wasn’t near the trains or the 1903 Winton, which was the first car ever driven all the way across the United States. I figured he wouldn’t be too hard to find, though. Someone would see him and scream. But all I heard was the recording of the train whistle.
    Then I heard another sound, like lava bubbling. Nanny X pulled out her diaper phone and opened a text message from NAP: “New fish. Fountain near Castle. Go.”
    I had never noticed a fountain by the Smithsonian Castle. Nanny X said that was because it was small, and there usually weren’t any fish in it, not even goldfish. I wondered if that meant we were going after another robot. And if this time it was going to eat more than Eliza’s coloring-book pages.
    Nanny X called Boris and told him to wait for Ali and Stinky at the meeting spot in the lobby. Then they would join us at our new meeting place . ( Actually, what she told himwas that we would “rendezvous” near the Castle fountain. I wasn’t sure “rendezvous” counted as a reading-connection word, because I’d never seen it in my reading.)
    We took off for another round of fishing. I saw a woman standing outside the museum, playing some sort of video game. We’d seen her before, by the art gallery. She didn’t notice anything around her, like the fact that our nice day was turning cloudy.
    Eliza looked at the sky. “Uh-oh,” she said.
    I was getting tired of being paired up with Nanny X and my little sister all the time. But then I got a reward. As soon as we crossed onto the sidewalk on the Mall, Nanny X pulled out her bunny slippers and offered them to me.
    â€œThese are
arctic
,” I said, pulling off one of my wet socks.
    â€œHyperborean,” said Nanny X.
    â€œHyper—?”
    â€œFrom the land beyond the north wind. I think that would count as cool. But be careful,” she added. “We don’t want any more broken legs.”
    I took off my other shoe and sock, and put my wrinkly feet into the softest slippers I’d ever worn. Then Nanny X helped me up, and I headed for the Castle.
    The crowd was thinning out, now that it was getting cloudy, so there weren’t many people to avoid. I led us around the building and into the courtyard on the other side.
    Fast. Faster. Fastest.
    â€œTo the left, Jake Z,” Nanny X called. I curved around.
    The fountain was up ahead, between the Castle and the Arts and Industries Building. Fortunately my skating was way better than my swimming. I skated around two little kids and aimed for the fountain. But there was one thing I couldn’t remember: how to slow down. It had something to do with the direction you pointed your toes. In? Out?
    The fountain was getting closer.
    â€œ
In!
” yelled Nanny X. “You point your toes
in
!”
    I changed the direction of my feet, but I wasn’t fast enough.
    Bam
. I plowed right into the fountain. My knees went kind of numbish and my arms went into the water. At least the bunny slippers were still dry.
    Since I had a close-up view of the fountain, I saw the fish right away. It looked almost identical to the fish we’d caught in the Potomac, only this one was kind of greenish, like the water, instead of red.
    This time we knew exactly what to do. I took off the bunny slippers while Nanny X took a hook from her hat and added a little bit of fishing line. Then she borrowed a small piece of paper from Eliza’s coloring book and baited the hook.
    â€œYou may do the