Free Noodle by Ellen Miles

CHAPTER ONE
    “Brrr!”
Lizzie folded her arms across her chest and tucked her chin into her jacket collar. “I’m
freezing!
Whose idea
was
this, anyway?” She glared at her father. she knew exactly whose idea it was. Who else in the Peterson family would think that it was a good idea to have a Saturday afternoon picnic at Loon Lake Park — in
March?
    On summer days, Loon Lake Park was one of Lizzie’s favorite places. The lake was just the perfect size, not too small and not too big. On a Saturday afternoon in July, the water would be a sparkling sweep of crystal blue instead of a flat plain of rough gray ice. The sun would be blazing, but there would be cool, shady places under the towering trees near shore. The green, grassy slopewhere people parked their beach chairs and coolers in summer was now just a dingy patchwork of leftover snow and mud. In summer, the park’s sandy beach, playground, and campground would be alive with activity: Kids and moms and dads would be swimming and fishing and paddling canoes, climbing the jungle gym and playing catch, and buying Popsicles from the little store. There would be that special, only-in-summer smell in the air, a mix of hot dogs grilling and suntan lotion and newly-mowed grass. Now it was totally quiet and empty except for the Petersons.
    Lizzie looked across the frozen lake. There were a few little houses — cabins, really — along the far shore. Each one had its own little beach, a dock, and maybe a canoe or a rowboat. Nobody was at the cabins now, but in summertime they’d be full of people, just like the park was.
    Lizzie sometimes pretended that the smallest cabin, the one with moose antlers over thedoorway, was hers. She liked to imagine waking up early and starting her day by doing a cannon-ball off its dock, right into the still, blue water. The gates at the park entrance didn’t even open until ten A.M. , but if you had your own cabin you could swim whenever you wanted.
    Dad said those cabins cost a ton of money. Since he was a firefighter and Mom was a newspaper reporter, the Petersons were not exactly millionaires. That meant they could not afford a cabin at Loon Lake.
    At least they lived nearby, so they could visit as often as they liked. They came all the time in the summer — and they always came at least once in the winter, too. Dad said their winter picnic was “a highlight” of his year. He said he and Mom used to go on winter picnics all the time. They would bring binoculars to look for winter birds, plenty of food, and blankets to keep them warm. That was long ago, before Lizzie and her twoyounger brothers, Charles and the Bean (his real name was Adam, not that anybody ever called him that), were even born.
    It wasn’t that Lizzie really minded the winter picnics. It was fun to help load up the basket with blankets and thermoses full of hot cocoa and spicy chili. She liked the part where she and Dad made a fire in one of the picnic area fireplaces. And she could even deal with sitting on the cold, hard ground, poking a marshmallow on a stick into the dying coals. What she
didn’t
like was how it always took Mom and Dad so long to choose the exact right spot for the picnic.
    “How about over by the marsh?” Mom asked now. “We might see some interesting birds or some animal tracks.”
    “I like that spot by the boat docks,” Dad answered. “It has the best view of the lake.”
    Lizzie and her brothers stood there, shivering and looking out at the grayish-white frozen lake and the bare, brown trees along its shore. A stiffbreeze stung Lizzie’s cheeks. “Come on, you guys! I’m
freezing!”
she repeated.
    “
I
warm!” the Bean proclaimed. He pointed to his chest. “I
very
warm in my Fur.”
    Lizzie rolled her eyes. The thing about the Bean was that he liked to pretend he was a puppy. He liked to take naps on a doggy bed, eat doggy snacks, and play with doggy toys. Lizzie had always thought all that stuff was kind of cute.
    But lately,