The Sugar Mountain Snow Ball by Elizabeth Atkinson Page A

earnings?”
    â€œI’m not sure, but I think I want to start ski lessons a lot sooner now, and maybe take more than one or two, so I can get really good,” I replied too loudly.
    â€œSki lessons!” Anton hollered. “Have you ever even been on skis, LaRue?”
    â€œWhy would I need ski lessons if I’ve already skied, Anton?”
    â€œHave you ever been on skis?” Eleanor asked.
    â€œI hate skiing,” he said, dodging the question, which was so typical of a kid like him who twists everything around to make himself seem better than everyone else. “Who wants to hang around with a bunch of snobby Outers from nowheresville?”
    â€œYou wouldn’t say that if you were one of them,” I snapped back, “because then you would be the happiest kid on earth.”
    Anton stood up and shouted, “HA! I already am the happiest kid on earth.”
    Then the rest of the brainiacs stood up, too, and followed their leader to the garbage cans to dump their trays.
    â€œDon’t let him bother you,” said Eleanor. “Believe me, he’ll argue anything. He’s actually not that bad once you get to know him.”
    Just then, I noticed Anton stop to pick up something from the floor. It looked like a headset. He gave it to Lewis, a hearing-impaired boy in our grade. Lewis smiled and Anton high-fived him.
    For a brief second, I wondered if I could actually be wrong about Anton.



14
    â€œHow about five o’clock?” Eleanor asked. “You should walk over before it gets dark.”
    I had almost keeled over when I got the call from Eleanor this morning. Saturday is my day to sleep in, of course, since my alarm rings before dawn during the week. So I knew something had to be up when the phone rang extra early, which almost never happens on the weekend.
    Mim had already left for work, and the twins were still in bed, too, so at first I thought it might be an emergency, like Pop calling from the road. When it turned out to be Eleanor, sounding super cheerful, it was just about the best way to wake up on a Saturday, especially when she said she was calling to invite me to dinner.
    I would have canceled plans with the Head Outer (if there were one) to get a dinner invite to Eleanor’s house. It’s not like I haven’t been hinting forever. She said it was her father’s idea—that he really wanted to get to know Eleanor’s friends, starting with me, her best friend!
    To be sure it was okay, I called Mim at the Slope Side Café. She was just as excited as I was, and even offered to buy a gift box of assorted Monster Chunk cookies with her employee discount for me to take along as a present, which is the polite thing to do when you’re invited to someone’s house for a meal.
    After making all our plans, I was so wound up with excitement, I didn’t know what I would do with myself for the rest of the day as I waited for dinnertime to roll around. It was snowing hard outside, practically a blizzard, so I didn’t feel like dragging the twins down to the playground or looping through town to check on customers in this weather. And I knew Eleanor would be busy right up until supper, making cute rainbow chokers, since we had recently received a rush order for them from the Treasure Chest.
    The twins were happily lounging on the couch, watching cartoons, eating bowls of Honey-Os cereal, but I just couldn’t stop fidgeting. I thought and thought about what I should do as I scanned the room—and that’s when it hit me. I decided to clean! I don’t know why, because I’m not an uptight neatnik in any way, but I hoped it might lead to something else, like it had with Eleanor and me; plus, I had to admit that it did feel good to see the results.
    So I started with sweeping the floors, which were all wood except in our bedrooms, where we have carpeting, and right away it looked like my cleaning had led to something