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

his body extra hard with gross-smelling soap to wash away the fountain water, and showers were icky.

To make matters worse, the campground the Peaches had settled into just outside Chicago had no pool, no sprinklers, no waterslides, no lake, and no stream—which meant Herb was, once again, dry and miserable. This was an outrage. He was trapped inside a stuffy tent every night, squeezed into a stinky food truck every day (but given no tasks or trust at all), and the only thing he truly needed to make him happy—water—was impossible to find. They were in the Midwest, not the desert, and his dad had promised. Swimming every day had been Herb’s goal for their trip, and it was starting to seem like no one was taking his goal seriously. Just like they never took him seriously. They made fun of his empty toilet paper roll collection, they’d laughed at his dog-walking business, no one ever wanted to play with his mice, and now this.

Lucky Lucy was making progress on her goal of finishing every book on the seventh-grade summer reading list. It was sort of annoying how focused she was on her goal, actually. Every time Herb wanted to play cards at the campground, or do the license plate game while they were driving, or play tic-tac-toe on the chalkboard menu outside their pie truck, Lucy said no because she wanted to sneak in a few minutes of reading time. Well, la-di-da.

And no one had forgotten about Freddy’s goal of stopping at weird roadside attractions. They’d even gone out of their way to see that giant, creepy fish!

Dad was also well on his way to succeeding at his goal of getting the Peach Pie Truck ready to compete in the Ohio Food Truck Festival—no one had forgotten about that part of their experiment. Dad didn’t actually seem to care about much of anything, except making sure they were ready to win.

But when it came time to focus on Herb’s simple, easy-peasy plan to swim every day? He was starting to get the sense that his goals didn’t matter.

Herb was feeling restless, especially after Freddy had told him he couldn’t “waste expensive ingredients” making Herb’s Cinnaballs anymore. This made Herb grumpy; his cinnaballs were the only way he’d been able to be a part of the family business. No one ever let him try to make real crusts anymore, and he wasn’t even allowed to mix up the peach mush for their pies. So now, in the evenings when the other three members of his family were baking and preparing stuff to sell the next day, Herb had nothing to do.

To make matters worse, Herb’s pet mice had also begun to outgrow the small, no-fun space inside their little tank. The three mouse babies looked miserable. Because Herb himself was squished and trapped much of the time, he knew exactly how his little friends felt. It was no fun at all to be stuck inside such cramped quarters every day, with no freedom to roam or choose what they wanted to do.

Herb knew he should probably release his mice when they got a little older—it was the kind and right thing to do, Lucy had told him. Herb understood that. They were born in the wild, so they deserved to return to the wild—they just weren’t quite ready to be on their own yet. And to tell the truth, Herb wasn’t ready to let them go. They needed him. But still, he wished they could explore a bit of the world outside their tank now. How boring, to spend every day inside a glass tank or a cardboard box. They could see the rest of the world, but they couldn’t get out and explore it. Herb knew what that was like.

That’s when Herb realized, even if he couldn’t control his own fate, he could improve life for his mice!

So while the rest of his family worked on baking the pies they would sell in downtown Chicago the next day, Herb got to work on a fun task of his own. First, he filled his arms with a pile of stiff cardboard he found at the campground’s recycling station. Then, slowly and quietly, he dragged his supplies into the tent he was now sharing with Lucy. (The four Peaches had begun trading off tent partners each night, since Dad snored—bad. Lucy and Freddy had protested when Herb first brought up the idea of swapping tent-buddies, but after a lot of discussion about it, Lucy had announced that it was only fair that they take turns sleeping next to the snoring machine. Herb felt pretty sure Lucy just wanted a chance to sleep in the same tent as him and his mice and his stuffed pig.)

That evening, no one paid any attention to Herb coming or going out of the family’s campsite, which was probably for the best. Herb knew his sister and brother would probably try to take over his project and boss him around if they knew what he was planning (because it was a good and fun idea), and he wanted to do something nice for his pets all on his own.

The first thing Herb did after he dragged all that cardboard inside the tent was to stuff Lucy’s pillow under his own pillow for safekeeping—right next to his stuffed pig. Next, he pushed all the books and sleeping bags to the outside edges of the tent, creating a big open space in the center. Then, he covered the floor of the tent with cardboard. After, he tucked and folded more pieces of cardboard along the edges of the sleeping bags to create four upright walls in the middle of the tent.

As soon as that was done, he placed his entire collection of empty toilet paper rolls into the big open space. They made perfect tunnels and hills for the mice to play in and chew! Herb knew his new collection would come in handy for something.

Last, he spread