Freestyle with Avery by Annie Bryant

will.” Dad nudged me in the arm.
    I stared hard at the dish I was drying.
    “Avery?” Dad prompted me.
    “What?” I sounded startled. I wanted to tell Dad about Jason but the words just weren’t coming. It was embarrassing, and I wasn’t sure why. “I don’t know. He’s nice. He likes animals, like me. He doesn’t know a lot of kids here yet.”
    “Kazie loves animals,” Dad pointed out.
Who cares what Crazie Kazie thinks about animals?
Why was Dad obsessed with making sure that Kazie and I liked all the same things? “She did bring Farkle. Marty must be happy to have a new friend,” Dad added with a wink. We looked at each other and burst out laughing.
    “Pleeeease, Dad. Farkle and Marty? You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s like me hanging out with Anna and Joline. It’s just not gonna happen.”
    Dad laughed. He knew all about the Queens of Mean. Farkle was the Feline King of Mean—that was for sure! Dad gave me a big hug. “I want you to feel completely at home here … always. Just make sure that next time you tell me before you go somewhere, okay?”
    “Okay,” I promised. “Dad … there’s one more thing.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Well, I think that it would be a lot easier for Jason to make friends in Telluride if he knew how to snowboard. But he hasn’t lived here very long and he’s never tried itbefore. I know that snowboarding can be expensive … so I was thinking maybe there’s some way we could help him? I know he’d want to help out in return.” Jason didn’t seem like the type to accept a handout. “I was just thinking he could borrow a snowboard … like for the day or something just to try it out.”
    Dad shrugged. “It’s no problem. I can always use an extra hand with inventory. He can come in the morning at nine a.m. But are you sure that this is what Jason wants, Avery?”
    “Please, Dad! He lives in Colorado! Every kid in Colorado needs to snowboard. That’d be like … like, um … like living in Hawaii and not being able to surf.”
    Dad rolled his eyes, but he was totally not mad anymore. “Okay, Avery.”
    “Or like living in Boston and hating the Red Sox.”
    “Don’t even go there!” Dad laughed and started pushing me to the stairs to get ready for bed.
    But I was just getting started. “Or living in the North Pole and hating reindeer. Or—”
    “I get the picture,” he said and plopped a furry little ball in my arms.
    “Marty!”
    Marty made a yelpy noise that I’d never heard before. He kept looking frantically around the room and then up at me. “Don’t worry, little dude,” I assured him. “Farkle’s gone. We’re safe now.”
    “Okay, Avery, good night,” Dad said and tried to send me off with a hug, but I was too quick and dodged it instead.
    “Time out! Can I call Jason super quick before I go to bed? Please?”
    Dad tapped his watch, but handed me the phone and a phonebook to look up Fred and Bonnie Hulbert. I flipped through the pages and crossed my fingers that I had the right one. After three rings, someone picked up.
    “Herr-ow,” said a kid at the other end.
    “Um, hi. Is Jason there?”
    “Who is it?” asked the kid.
    “It’s Avery … is this Frankie?”
    “Mooooooom!” he suddenly shouted, and then I heard a
“BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!”
He hung up on me. Whoa.
    I sighed and waited a minute before clicking on the phone again to redial the number. But when I did there wasn’t any dial tone.
    “Hello?” This voice still belonged to a boy, but older this time.
    “Jason?” I asked hopefully.
    “Avery?”
    I laughed. “Whoa! It’s so weird that you called! I just tried to call you but Frankie accidentally hung up on me. At least, I think it was an accident.”
    “Actually … I figured it was you when I saw Madden on the caller ID.”
    Duh!
“Oh, right.” I took a deep breath and cut to the chase. “All right, you remember how I was telling you about snowboarding tonight?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Okay. Well, I was talking