Hunter Moran Saves the Universe
Read Hunter Moran Saves the Universe Online
Authors: Patricia Reilly Giff
Love to my sons,
Jim and Bill â¦
who deny any resemblance to Hunter and Zack.
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Text copyright © 2012 by Patricia Reilly Giff
Spot art copyright © 2012 by Chris Sheban
All Rights Reserved
HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
www.holidayhouse.com
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ISBN 978-0-8234-2614-0 (ebook)w
ISBN 978-0-8234-2729-1 (ebook)r
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Giff, Patricia Reilly.
Hunter Moran saves the universe / Patricia Reilly Giff. â 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: While trying to hide an incriminating report card and dodge meddling siblings, fifth-grade twins Hunter and Zack set out to save their town from a diabolical dentist who is planning to blow it to smithereens.
ISBN 978-0-8234-1949-4 (hardcover)
[1. TwinsâFiction. 2. Brothers and sistersâFiction. 3. Family lifeâFiction.
4. Mystery and detective stories. 5. Humorous stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.G3626Hu 2012
[Fic]âdc23
2012002969
Contents
YEE-HA! THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER.
IT'S THE SECOND DAY OF SUMMER.
HERE WE AREâDAY THREE OF SUMMER.
IT'S ANOTHER DAY, AND NOT A MYSTERY IN SIGHT.
YEE-HA! THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER.
Butâ¦
Chapter 1
We have a major problem here. And to make matters worse, sneaking out the back door is like wading through a field of land mines.
Linny watches our every move. Because she's the oldest, she thinks she's the alpha dog.
William is painting a huge mural of worlds colliding on the hall wall. Globs of paint are everywhere â¦
⦠especially on our bare feet.
“Don't screw this up,” I whisper to my twin brother, Zack, my sneakers slung over my shoulder.
“I won't, Hunter.” He runs one finger across his throat, then slides through a dollop of midnight blue. He keeps his mouth shut, though, as the paint oozes up between his toes.
The stakes are high. One sound before we escape and we're stuck with our five-year-old brother, Steadman, for the rest of the morning. Steadman has a mouth that closes only to chomp down on chocolate bars and potato chips.
And yes, there's Mom's soft voice coming from the
kitchen. It's a little hard to hear her. Mary is screaming in there, banging a plate on her high chair. But basically what Mom's saying is “Linny, would you check on Hunter and Zack? Maybe they'll take Steadmanâ”
There's only one thing to do: duck into Mom's bill-paying room. It's so sacred that Linny will never guess we're there.
I open the door an inch at a time and go in on my knees, too smart to leave footprints. Behind me, Zack hops in on one foot. A good move, but it may be too late. Blue footprints follow him all the way down the hall.
We close the door behind us and sit on the floor, hardly breathing. Next door, St. Ursula's church bells clang a bunch of times. Ten o'clock, the day is wasting away.
Mom's bill-paying room is a mess, filled with papers and bills, pictures of Pop and the six of us, an empty birdcage from Petey, who turned up his claws before Mary was born last year, and Mom's cell phone, which is ringing like crazy, alerting the whole house.
Pick it up, which we're not supposed to do? Let it ring until we're deaf? Or until Mom comes in to see who it is?
There's something wrong with this phone anyway. The static is so bad, it sounds as if a typhoon is roaring in.
Linny's circling around outside. Any minuteâ
Zack reaches for the phone; he lies on top of it as if it's a grenade about to explode. The sound is hardly muffled. I reach under him for it. “Hello,” I whisper.
“Agent Five here,” a muffled voice says.
Who is he kidding? Or is it a she?
“Six here,” I say, listening to what sounds like a hailstorm.
“Right on,” I think the voice says. It sounds like he/she has swallowed a mouthful of stones.
I wonder if it's one of William's friends. Probably. They're all weird.
“The original missing from
S-T-U
,” the voice says.
S-T-U.
Ha. St. Ursula's Church next door. “Sure,” I say.
I snicker into the phone. Zack covers his mouth.
The voice hesitates. “Dig ⦔
“What?” I say.
“Huntâ”
My name? Definitely a seventh-grade idiot in William's class. “Hunter?” I say to help things along. I add a few explosive sounds to go with the telephone typhoon.
The caller hesitates for the barest second. “Wrong number.”
“You're right about that, buddy,” I say.
The phone goes dead in my hands.
“So vat you tink about dat?” I say to Zack in a spy voice.
“I tink you'd better get out of Mom's bill-paying room.” It's Linny, alpha dog, out in the hall.
“Arf,” Zack says.
We're caught before we can even sneak out to the funeral.
Chapter 2
What a way to start the summer! Wind whooshing all over the place, rain spitting at us, a plane taking off from Sturgis Air Force Base with a grinding noise that could drive you crazy.
Heads together, Zack and I push the shopping cart out of the garage. We're on our way to Vinny's Vegetables and Much More. The cart eeks and squeaks along the driveway, on its way to falling apart, but we're stuck with a million things to carry home. You'd need a computer brain to remember it all.
The only thing that keeps this from complete boredom is a quick stop for the funeral.
“Some phone call,” Zack says. “What do you think
the original
meant?”
Thoughts of Sister Appolonia pop into my head. There she was, a couple of weeks ago, looming over me and my fifth grade essay. She wore a tan suit that made her look like a cardboard refrigerator box. “Do you have one original thought in your head, Hunter Moran?” she asks.
Who could be original when the subject was building bridges in an urban community? Never mind
original.
I don't even know what
urban
means. No wonder I had to wing it.
I wing it now. “
The original
means ⦔
And then I give up.
“It could be anything,” Zack, the thinker, says.
Next door, we pass St. Ursula's Church. Father Elmo has the sprinkler going even in the rain. When he isn't saving souls, he's saving the lawn.
“S-T-U,” Zack mutters. “Something missing from the church?”
“Who knows?” I say.
Next we pass school. It's locked up tight, the windows bare and blank. Sister Appolonia is off for the summer. She announced that she was going to teach unfortunate children out west.
Unfortunate is right.
Diglio the dentist's house is on the corner. Diglio isn't into lawns; the patch in front looks like the Gobi desert. We're careful not to step on his weeds, though; Diglio is a yeller.
We cut across the street, pass Old Lady Campbell's house, and head toward Murdock Avenue.
“Our major problem is a little your fault,” I tell Zack. I hold two fingers an inch apart to emphasize.
Zack bites his lip. He does that sometimes, teeth crunching one side and then the other. He doesn't answer; he doesn't have to. We can almost read each other's minds.
And what his mind says is that we shouldn't have tried to alter his report card in the first place, even though it was only to spare Mom's feelings.
We're talking about a simple change, an F to an A. One downward slash with a pen. The sad thing is that the rest of the card is great. Mostly As, with only a B in health. Zack messed up on how often you should brush your teeth. Sister Appolonia said with his approach, he'd have nothing but gums by the time he was thirteen.
No, this mark was for music appreciation.
Rain dribbles down the back of my neck. I hunch my head into my shoulders, thinking, as we eek and squeak along. Mom told Mrs. Wu, the librarian, that Zack's a musical genius. After all, he takes cello lessons from Old Lady Campbell.
Mom would be crushed by that F. We can't let that happen. Mom is the best.
But last night, we messed up the report card slash. Wrong color pen, then an eraser that drilled a hole through
Music Appreciation.
We held the card out the window to catch a drop of rain and smush it up a little. We were left with a pockmarked report card. The only visible letter was that
F.
“This whole thing just wore me out, Hunter,” Zack said, holding his head.
“Never mind,” I told him. “We'll have a ceremonial report card funeral.”
That brightened him right up. And it's the main reason we're heading toward Vinny's Vegetables and Much More.
Sister Appolonia would be pleased. After all, she always says, “Use your common sense, boys, that is, if you have any!”
That's exactly what we're doing. We cut across the library lawn, heads down so Mrs. Wu doesn't see us. A mistake. I barrel into Old Lady Campbell, who drops her purse, a pile of books, and a couple of Kleenex. Right behind her is her dog, Fred. He's small, brown, and fuzzy, with breath that would knock you over; he just misses taking a chunk out of my leg.
“The library will open any minute,” Old Lady Campbell says.
I pick up some of her stuff and glance at the sign over the door. Gigantic letters.
NO DOGS ALLOWED.
Old Lady Campbell points to her huge shopping bag. “Fred just pops himself right in there,” she says. “It works every time.”