Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
My face flushes red at the thought of bringing this box to work. What everyone will say. The looks I’ll get, twice as scary as the ones on these jiggling monstrosities.
“B-But Mom,” I start, “today’s the spring crafts festival, not the baking festival, and—”
“Jiggle-Wiggles are a craft, sweetie! An edible craft!”
I stare down at the gelatinous little nightmares.
It’s an understatement to say I’m shy. I tried to be a people person once. It was a few years ago back in high school, I decided to audition for the spring play. I saw it as a final (and desperate) effort to change my life and overcome all my fears. It did not go as planned. The look of abject secondhand humiliation on Ms. Joy’s face while I stood on that big stage to audition is still burned onto the backs of my eyelids to this day. I couldn’t even form words like a regular human being. I just stood there like a department store mannequin making these bizarre, elongated squeaking sounds for far too long before finally dismissing myself, bolting off the stage like my pants caught fire, and donating all of my lunch right back to the school via a nearby bathroom toilet.
The Spruce High theatre department never saw me again.
And now my mom wants me to bring a box of Jiggle-Wiggles to work. On a day that will already be stressful enough—the day of the Annual Spruce Spring Crafts Festival.
Does she want me to actually die?
“Trust your mama!” she sings, smiling so big, her eyes vanish.
While it may seem like I’m trying to somehow shrink inside my own body like a turtle, I still know my manners, so I give my kind and well-meaning mother a smile and thank her.
It’s the thought that counts, right?
A few minutes later, there I am, Noah Reed, Spruce’s oddest and most awkward anomaly, unexplainable, inexcusable, hair as messy as a hurricane, glasses at the end of my nose, sleepy-eyed, pale-faced, and stumbling down the sidewalk in the old part of town with a box of Jiggle-Wiggles in my arms. It’s one of those pastry boxes with a clear window on top, so the warped little nightmares are perfectly visible as they dance mockingly at me every step of the way. The small, narrow Spruce Press building is well within walking distance to my house, so I’m distressingly close already. I wonder if I can sneak in and drop this box off somewhere no one will see. They might assume it’s just a delivery from a sweet and thoughtful person around town. As I approach the front steps of the building, I recite to myself: “Please let me get in unnoticed, please let me get in unnoticed, please let—”
But before I make it even halfway up the steps, the doors fly open, and my tall, lanky supervisor appears, standing over me like a tower—a very cocky, weary-eyed tower. “Mornin’, Noah. Listen, I got a job for ya. You’re gonna hate it, but I’m all outta options. My dad’s on my ass. Probably up it, too. Please stop lookin’ at me like that, I have had such a long week. What in the heck are those?”
I stare up at him, eyes wide and blinking. My supervisor has a cup of coffee in one hand and a half-eaten glazed donut in the other. His tired eyes peek out from a curtain of dark brown bangs. Stubble dusts his tanned and weathered face, aging his otherwise youthful appearance. His name’s Burton, and ever since his dad hired him to help out here at the Spruce Press, he’s become a coffee-and-donut-devouring monster. This job isn’t his passion in life. I don’t blame him. No one in the galaxy grows up saying, “You know what I’d love to do with my life? Document everyone else’s!” My dad once said you have to be a total weirdo to love this line of work. He should know; my grandpa used to run the Spruce Press.
I guess I’m one of those weirdoes.
Also, I didn’t realize I was looking at him any particular way. I make an adjustment to my facial expression. “Is the job to, um … go out and take photos of the festival?”
Burton frowns. “Why are you scowling like that? You look like you’re tryin’ to fart.”
I relax my mouth. “Sorry.”
“Now you look mad again.”
I relax my eyes. “Better?”
“Now you look like a Martian. That what these are?” He leans over the box, squinting inside. “Little, uh … jello aliens …?”
My cheeks burn. I decide to go along with it. “Y-Yeah, aliens. They’re aliens. My, uh—I got them at the store. For everyone.”
Burton takes a big bite of his donut, squints at me. “Why?”
I stare blankly back, frozen.
Why didn’t I say my mom made them?
“Don’t matter,” Burton says before I can reply. “No one’s here to eat ‘em anyway.” He slips back into the building.