He dunked them with his spoon.
“Dad,” he said, “Eleanor used to live on the corner of Central Avenue and 31st Street. She told me. Where is that?”
“Let’s see,” said Dad. He brought his phone to the table and typed into the map app. “Right here.” The blue dot flashed on the spot.
Owen pushed the directions button, like he did whenever they went places.
“How would you get there?” asked Dad. “See if you can figure it out.”
This was too easy. Owen clicked on the bus icon and read the directions. “The 67 bus south. Then the 34 east. Then walk two blocks south.”
Dad checked. “Good job.” He pocketed the phone. “Now, finish your breakfast.”
“Pillbugs!” said Michael. “I could teach Eleanor. I bet she doesn’t know where to find the best pillbugs.”
“I bet she doesn’t want to know,” said Owen.
Reading time was nice. Dad read four stories that Michael picked—books with pictures on every page—and then he read a chapter from Narnia. That book actually had a longer name, but Owen and Michael both called it the Narnia book. A couple of weeks earlier, Owen had noticed a collection of small paperbacks on the shelf. The covers had monsters and swords and lions and things like that, but when he opened the books, they had lots of words and looked very grown up, with hardly any pictures. He took the first book off the shelf and asked his dad to read it to him. And to his surprise, Dad said yes.
While Dad read Narnia, Owen and Michael lay on their bellies on the floor and colored. Owen colored a picture of Aslan the lion right as they were reading about him. It was the best thing ever.
But when he went back into his and Michael’s room, the spaceship dangled outside the window.
Inside the Falcon was a note. It said,
THE GOLDFISH IS HUNGRY!!!!
(After lunch)
(from Eleanor)
Chapter 11 Eleanor
Eleanor had been up for hours. Hours. Her mom had sent her back to bed twice because it was too early to get up, and then after her mom left for work, her dad sent her back to bed one more time. Finally she was allowed to get up because Alicia was mad at all the noise Eleanor was making getting in and out of bed. But she had to sit quietly in the living room and read a book without talking until at least seven a.m.
Seven a.m. is a long time away when it is only 6:27 and you have already been up forever, waiting for morning to come.
Eleanor tried to read, but she needed to do things. She got out her markers and drew a big drawing of her tree house, the one behind her old home, with lots of details, like the rope ladder and the two windows and the red roof. She even added some details that weren’t in the real tree house, like a pulley for carrying snacks up and down, and flowerpots in the window, and a red chimney in the roof with little friendly curls of smoke coming out. Last of all, she wrote MY HOME! under the tree house, in bright pink letters, because pink was her favorite. Then it was seven a.m.
Dad got up and made some breakfast for Alicia and Eleanor. (Aaron was still sleeping. In his own room. By himself.)
After breakfast, Dad had work to do in his office (in a corner of Mom and Dad’s bedroom), because even though he didn’t teach in the summer, he still had reading and writing to do. Being a college professor used up a lot of thinking time. He asked Eleanor to give him one hour to work, and then they could explore the new neighborhood.
Eleanor shook her head. “I don’t want to explore the new neighborhood.”
“Hmm,” said Dad. “Well, maybe after lunch then.”
“Can I play with Owen?”
“It’s too early. Maybe after lunch.”
Uuuuuuuugh. After lunch was forever. And she’d already had quiet time since super early in the morning. How much quiet time could one kid handle?
Eleanor went to her room—her and Alicia’s room, that is—and she sat on her bed and thought. Then she wrote a note. A very important note. She put it in the Millennium Falcon and sent it up to Owen. It said, THE GOLDFISH IS HUNGRY!!!! (After lunch). As an afterthought, she added (from Eleanor) just to make sure he knew who the note was from.
She waited.
Nothing happened. Maybe he was still sleeping. She waited some more. Nothing happened again.
She decided to get a message to him another way. Maybe she could throw something at his window. Something soft-ish. Hard enough to make a noise but soft enough not to break glass.
But when she threw her pillow at Owen’s window, it didn’t go up enough, and she barely caught the pillow before it fell all the way to the ground.
She decided to build a machine that would throw things up to Owen. For the rest of the morning, she took apart her trebuchet and built a bigger, stronger one. She was pretty sure that if she could launch things straight up, Owen could learn to catch them, and with practice they would both become all-star baseball players.
When she got the trebuchet rebuilt, she tested it by launching her pink rectangle-shaped eraser.
But she couldn’t get the trebuchet to throw the eraser straight up—she could only get it to throw farther. And harder.
The second time she hit Alicia, who was sitting on her bed reading, Alicia told her to get out.
“No. It’s my room too!”
“Then stop throwing stuff at me!”
“I’m an engineer. I have to test things. Don’t tell me what to do anyway.”
“Daaaaaaad!”
And the morning was done.
Alicia and Eleanor both got to help with lunch. Eleanor got