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

“Why?” Herb asked. “I don’t want pie. Pie is the pits.”

“We’re creating demand,” he explained to his brother. “Trust me.” Then he went inside the truck and told Dad to come outside to stand in line, too. Once Herb, Freddy, and Dad were all in line, Freddy said, “Lucy, you pretend to serve us.”

“This is craz—” Lucy began, laughing. But she quieted down when she saw a group of guys making their way toward the Peach Pie Truck’s fake line.

Freddy shot her a look that said, See?

The three guys chatted with one another as they stood at the back of the “line.” Freddy turned to them, and said, “I’m still deciding what I want. You can cut in front of me. All these pies look top-notch, so it’s hard to choose!”

“Yes, um, same here,” Dad said, looking uncomfortable as he stepped aside. He clearly wasn’t good at pretending, but the fake line strategy had worked. Dad mumbled, “You can, uh, hop ahead of me, too.”

“I don’t like pie,” Herb announced, which made the guys laugh.

“Okay,” one of them said, scanning the menu. Then he rubbed his hands together and told Lucy, “I’ll get a slice of peach pie, please.”

“Make that two,” his friend said.

“I’ll go with apple,” the third chimed in.

“I’m so sorry,” Lucy said, flustered. She glanced at Freddy, for once looking desperate for help. “We don’t have peach today, we, uh—”

Freddy spoke up, trying to cover for his sister. “Yeah, I read in the paper that there was a—um—a peach shortage this week. The whole Midwest had trouble with their shipment from, uh, bluh bluh bluh.” He mumbled something no one could understand, and then trailed off.

“Weird,” one of the peach pie fans said, turning around to look at Lucy again. “Okay, then, I guess I’ll get apple, too.”

“I’ll go with lemon meringue,” the third said. “Too bad about the peach thing, since that’s the name of your truck. Must be rough.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, glancing at Freddy with a helpless shrug. She handed the guys their slices of pie, then passed each a fork. “That’s five dollars apiece.”

They all paid, and Freddy felt a flutter of excitement in the pit of his belly. Their first sales! It felt great. “Enjoy!” Freddy cried out, waving as the guys walked away. “The Peach Pie Truck will be here tomorrow, too, so tell all your friends to stop by.”

As soon as their customers were out of hearing range, the Peaches whooped and hugged.

“Three slices sold,” Freddy cheered. “We’re on a roll here, people. A roll!”

From the Sketchbook of Freddy Peach:

CHERRY IN A SPOON

Today we saw Spoonbridge and Cherry, a really cool sculpture in Minneapolis that’s made out of aluminum and stainless steel. Fun fact: it weighs 7,000 pounds! Maybe one of my art installations will be on display at this sculpture garden someday.

MINNEAPOLIS MONEY:

(BY HERB)

∗ Cost of Pie Supplies: $632

∗ Sales: $70

∗ Total Profit: -$562

12

  MOVING ON

After a couple long, wet days in Minneapolis—and only two where they’d actually had pies to sell—Dad decided it was time to move on to drier, pie-friendlier pastures. “I’d say it’s time to hit the road,” he announced after they closed up the truck on Thursday afternoon. “It’s important to know when to cut your losses, and I’d say the Minneapolis leg of our journey has been a total bust.”

Holding a half-empty cup of coffee in one hand, Dad led Herb and his siblings toward the nearby coffee shop that had let the Peaches use their restroom all day (as long as Dad kept buying fresh cups of coffee). “Seems like Minneapolis is not our lucky spot. We’ve had a crummy go of it here, but maybe we’ll fare better in Chicago.”

Herb didn’t think Minneapolis had been even a little bit crummy. It had been a rough start, and they hadn’t sold a lot of pie, but they’d had some fun adventures. And to tell the truth, Herb didn’t care where they went next—as long as he was with his family, he got to sleep in a tent again, his mice were happy and healthy, and there was water to swim in.

So far, Herb had managed to meet his personal summer goal of swimming every day. The big, crowded campground just outside Minneapolis wasn’t anything special, but Herb had made a couple of wonderful dog friends that he was going to miss a lot after they left!

He’d also started a new collection on the road—he’d begun gathering empty toilet paper rolls from the campground bathroom (there were a lot of them!) and storing them under his seat in the truck. He was pretty sure they would come in handy for something, someday.

Their Minneapolis campground had been close to both the Mississippi River and the St. Croix River. Each morning, Dad had stopped the food truck so Herb could wade in a different river each day. The water had been too chilly for him to duck his head under, but he’d splashed around near shore and kicked water at his siblings, and Dad had finally taught him how to skip a flat, round stone across the surface of the swollen, rain-flooded river (Herb had been trying to master that for years back home, on Lake Superior).

Then, that morning, after they’d finished baking their pies and loaded up the truck, Lucy had begged Dad to stop at a big, beautiful flower garden she’d heard about from her best friend, Maren. There was a short break in the rain, and it felt good to play outside. While Freddy sketched bugs and Dad fretted over some of the work he’d brought along on the trip, Lucy and Herb set off on a walk together. They found a rocky waterfall fountain that Herb was allowed to splash around in. He wasn’t sure the fountain officially counted as swimming, but it had been fun nonetheless.

Minneapolis was big and exciting and full of neat stuff. They had even found a