Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 107944 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107944 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Mama brushed her hand against her forehead. “No buts. Come on, get down. Then to the living room. Hug-a-thon now.” Mama waved her hand toward us both.
We climbed off the countertop and stomped our feet to the living room.
Mama saw a woman talk about a hug-a-thon thing she made her kids do on a talk show. Whenever her kids would get into a fight, she made them hug each other and apologize for whatever they did wrong. The kids had to hug until both apologized, no matter what.
I wished Mama didn’t watch TV. It gave her bad ideas.
I hated hug-a-thons, and I always ended up having to do them with Aiden because he was a freaking jerk and always got me in trouble. If anything, Aiden should’ve been hugging himself. I wanted no part of this. I wasn’t eating the cookies!
Still, we were forced to hug one another, and we grumbled the whole time.
When Aiden’s mom, Laurie, came over, she noticed us hugging and smiled.
“Another fight?” Laurie questioned.
“You know it,” Mama replied. “Just a regular Tom and Jerry over here.”
“No apologies yet?”
“Not one.”
Laurie glanced down at her watch. “Well, hurry up with it, Aiden, or you won’t be able to make it to your acting class tonight.”
“But Mom!” Aiden whined.
“No buts. Get on with it,” his mom ordered. I liked Laurie, even though her son was a butthead. She always gave me candy when I went to her house and would ask me how my baking lessons were going with Mama.
“I’m sorry for calling you a name, Hailee,” Aiden said. He didn’t mean it, but he said it. He even seemed to mean it, too, which meant those stupid acting classes must’ve been working. That was why he almost cried about the cookie jar! Some stupid teacher taught him that trick!
Still, I smirked because he apologized first. Then I felt Mama poke me in the arm.
I grumbled. “I’m sorry for calling you a name, too, Aiden.”
“There we go. Was that so hard?” Mama asked.
“Yes,” we said at the same time. Another same moment. Gross.
We let go of our hug and dashed away from one another. Aiden and Laurie left to take him to his stupid acting class, and Mama and I made a batch of brownies later that night. They were the best brownies I’d ever made, and when I went to bed, I snuck one into my bedroom without Mama knowing.
I went to my window and looked across, where I saw Aiden sitting in his bedroom, too. I had the most annoying neighbor ever, and I hated that I had to look out my window and see his stupid face.
“Hey, loser!” I yelled.
He looked up and hurried over to the window. He had a grumpy look on his face. “What do you want, bigger loser?”
“Nothing from you, biggest loser!” I shot back.
“Then why did you call me over, huh?”
“Because I wanted to let you know you were a loser. And that I made the best brownies ever tonight, and you didn’t get to try them.” I held the brownie in the air and waved it around.
He narrowed his eyes. “Give me that!”
“Nope.”
He climbed out of his window, snuck across the yard to my window, and climbed into my room. With haste, he snatched the brownie from my hand and hurried back over to his room, where he ate the brownie faster than ever.
Joke was on him, though, because I wanted him to try the brownie and tell me what he thought.
He looked back at me. “You’re right,” he said with crumbs all over his face. “That is the best brownie ever, and now you don’t have it!”
“I hate you, Aiden Walters.”
“I hate you, too, Hailee Jones.”
I turned off my light and climbed into bed. He couldn’t see it, but I was smiling in my bed, too, because Aiden liked my brownies, and even though I didn’t want to care, I cared a little about what he thought.
Gorilla butt liked my brownies.
Cool.
2
Aiden
Ten Years Old
* * *
I couldn’t believe Hailee got Mrs. Elk’s class, too. Now I didn’t only have to look at her stupid self outside of my bedroom window all the time but I also had to sit in the same class with her for a whole year. That was Hailee overload. She was also in my second-grade class last year, and all I did was make stupid faces toward her because it bugged her. But now I was in third grade and didn’t want to see her face anymore. Stupid Hailee and her stupid chipmunk cheeks.
When it was time for recess, the whole class headed outside. On our playground was a gigantic map of the United States, and Lars Thomas thought it would be fun to play a game where we’d break into two teams. We’d each get a number, and then he’d call out a number and a state, and each player from each team would have to dash to the state before the other player did.