The Great Peach Experiment 1, Erin Downing [books to read romance .TXT] 📗

dozen once-lost-but-now-found stuffed animals that he’d rescued from various places around town. Several had been forgotten by their kids at the playground. The purple bunny he’d found in a puddle in the grocery store parking lot. A fuzzy green frog had been left for dead on the sidewalk near the bus stop. The headless giraffe had appeared—like magic—on their front lawn when last winter’s snow melted. Each time Herb saw a stuffy in need, he picked it up and bathed it, nursed it back to good health, and added it to his box of friends in the back corner of his room. He knew it was his job to protect them.

Then there were the art projects: boxes and boxes of beautiful art projects that Herb had found—thrown carelessly away by kids at school. Whenever he found a lovely picture or diorama or clay creation tossed in the trash, Herb rescued it from the bin and brought it home to be treasured as part of the collection.

Herb had also started moving all the old clothes that no longer fit into his stash. He didn’t like to see things he cared about disappear for good. He’d never tell Lucy, but Herb had also taken a bunch of singleton mittens from the lost and found at school on the afternoon their school secretary was planning to throw them away.

There were also boxes and containers filled to bursting with:

• Cool pine cones and rusted matchbox cars he’d collected at the park

• Empty Thinking Putty tins

• Marbles

• Holey socks

• His mom’s nearly empty shampoo and hair cream bottles (He liked to smell those to help remember her.)

• Expired Box Tops

Herb was the keeper of all kinds of lost and forgotten treasures.

Though he missed his stuff at home, he was thrilled that he’d have a chance to start up a new collection on the road. His first major win was finding the mouse family. This was the most exciting—and challenging—treasure he’d ever had. He planned to take his responsibility for their well-being very seriously.

Other than the mice and his second-grade class hamster, there was only one other time in Herb’s life when he’d been entrusted with the care of a living thing. Herb had just started kindergarten when Mom got sick. His teacher that year had told him, nearly every day, that she was praying for their family. She’d also told him that if he prayed hard enough, and took good care of Mom and loved her and hugged her as much as he could, that he was doing his most important job. When she’d said that, Herb had thought that what she was telling him was: he had the power to make Mom better.

So he had done all the things Ms. Cheney had told him to do, and more, but Mom had died anyway. Herb had failed.

Since then, he’d vowed to take better care of everything that came into his possession. He wouldn’t let anyone or anything else go. Now, he had his chance to prove he could take care of something all on his own. It was Herb’s solemn duty to protect three little mice, and he couldn’t wait to show everyone that he was responsible enough to live up to the task.

That afternoon, when Herb’s dad pulled their big peach food truck into the campground where they would be staying that first night of their summer adventure, Herb set to work making his mice feel just as comfortable and cared for as the rest of the family. He had decorated their glass tank with a map, so the mice could see where they were traveling and feel like they were part of the family’s adventure, too.

But Herb knew that seeing and hearing about an adventure wasn’t the same as having an adventure. So while Freddy set up their two tents and Lucy got dinner ready, Herb transferred his mice from their glass enclosure into a lighter cardboard box, and brought them outside for some fresh air. He dropped snacks into the box and watched his tiny friends sniff and snuff the fresh, crisp air.

Once the tents were set up, Herb carried his mice into the yellow tent he would be sharing with Dad. He set up his own sleeping bag, and then got the mice settled in at the foot of his little bed. He tucked one of his T-shirts into a corner of the box so that they would have something soft to sleep in for the night.

Just as soon as they were snuggly, Dad’s voice echoed from somewhere outside the tent. “Kids! Time to bake!”

Herb scrambled to the tent’s front flap and unzipped it. Dad had promised to teach them all how to make pie today, so they would have their first round of treats ready to sell the very next day in downtown Minneapolis. Herb was excited to help.

“Naptime,” he told his mice. Then he blew them a kiss and zipped the tent up tight.

He scurried over to the food truck and hopped into the gleaming silver space. Dad was already busy measuring out flour and butter for the crusts. Lucy and Freddy tumbled into the truck behind Herb. “Wash up, then let’s get this show on the road,” he instructed. Herb did as he was told.

The four Peaches had decided as a group that their food truck’s signature item would be Great Aunt Lucinda’s famous peach pie. When Herb first saw Dad making this pie, he thought it looked pretty slimy: the peach slices Dad used were mushy and smushy, and the filling looked slimy and barfy when the peaches got all mixed up with sugar and cinnamon in the bowl. But after he saw and tasted the final product, he decided it was pretty cool how that mess of peaches could get turned into something so beautiful and perfect inside the food truck.

To figure out the rest of their pie offerings, Freddy had done some market research and told the family that selling some type of apple pie