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

and are planning to start up a business with it, but you don’t know what kind of food we’re selling? And this is a good idea how?” Lucy asked. Herb caught his sister rolling her eyes. She muttered, “Maybe we should sell peaches?”

“Or peaches-and-cream ice cream!” Herb hoped the idea of ice cream might cheer his sister up. “And other ice cream and malts and stuff? Mom liked ice cream.” He closed his eyes, trying to remember her favorite flavor, but he couldn’t.

Lucy grinned at him. “Do you guys remember, her favorite flavor was Superman?” she asked, as if she’d read Herb’s mind. “Just like you, Herbie. Mom liked that it turned her tongue all kinds of funny colors.”

Herb giggled. “I like that, too.”

“And I like your spirit, Herb,” Dad said. “An ice cream truck is a nice idea, but we have this fancy, nearly new, multichambered oven and a stove in the truck. Seems like we should use them somehow.”

“Monster cookies!” Freddy suggested. “Or tacos. Maybe both! Everyone likes tacos and cookies.”

“I do like cookies and tacos,” Dad said. He scratched his bald spot, which was surrounded by fluffy puffs of blond hair. “Hmmm.”

“Or…,” said Lucy, “maybe we should pick a food we already know how to make and go with that?”

Herb shrugged. “But what do we know how to make?” Most nights, Lucy made him and Freddy grilled cheese or omelets or butter noodles or smoothies or soup for dinner. They were all yummy, but none of those items seemed special enough for a food truck.

There was a long silence, during which Dad swung a cabinet door back and forth, back and forth. It squeaked and sighed, filling the silence. No one said anything. Finally, Dad blurted out: “What about Aunt Lucinda’s wonderful peach pie? I haven’t made it in years, but she did teach me how to make it. It was your mom’s favorite.” He furrowed his brow and added quietly, “At least, she always told Lucinda it was her favorite….”

“Peach pie,” Freddy said, smiling. “That’s catchy.”

“Catchy,” echoed Herb.

Lucy shook her head, but then she muttered, “I guess it’s settled, then.”

“The Peach Pie Truck,” Herb cheered. “Yum yum.”

Just as Herb said that, the cabinet door Dad had been swinging back and forth popped off its hinges and clattered to the floor. In the silence that followed, Dad gave his kids a forced smile, and said, “This summer is going to be great!”

From the Sketchbook of Freddy Peach:

HOW TO SPEND A MILLION DOLLARS

When I have a million bucks of my own, I’m going to buy a limo and hire a private driver to drive me to school every day. It’ll have lasers, a personal soda dispenser, a hot tub in the back, and probably even a butler!

3

  PIE FOR BREAKFAST

A few days later, at seven o’clock sharp on the first morning of summer break, Dad galloped through the second story of the Peach family’s small-but-cozy house, blasting “Reveille” from his phone. Freddy rubbed his eyes. Fourth grade was officially over, and summer was already off to a rollicking start.

Dad’s bugle wake-up music was most often used in the military, but it was also the ringtone for their father’s morning alarm. Though Dad had never served in the armed forces, his father had—and Walter Peach had grown up surrounded by some of his father’s old traditions. “Up and at ’em!” Dad cried while prancing up and down the hall. “All these peach pies are not gonna eat themselves!”

For Freddy, summer break usually meant ten weeks filled with art projects, fort making, epic cardboard-sword-and-shield battles with his friends Ethan and Henry, brushing his teeth sometime after noon each day (if at all), reading his favorite illustrated random facts book every afternoon (as well as researching his own random facts), and cereal for lunch. This summer, of course, things would have been a bit different than usual: Freddy had a hunch summer school teachers didn’t approve of kids who didn’t brush their teeth.

But as he listened to his father whooping and hollering out in the hall, Freddy quickly came to the conclusion that this summer was going to be a whole lot more different than he ever could have anticipated. He quickly shoved his blanket to the side, and then tossed stuffed animals down into his little brother’s bunk to try to wake him. But Herb could sleep through almost anything, which was fortunate, since he shared a room with Freddy.

Though Freddy and Lucy each had their own rooms when they were little, after Herb was born, the boys had been forced to share. Lucy—as the oldest—got the little bedroom to herself. Herb and Freddy squeezed into the big bedroom with bunk beds. Lately, Freddy and Herb’s room was even more crowded than usual. Herb had been building up a whole bunch of “collections,” and his piles and bins of stuff had expanded to the point that their room had almost no empty floor space left.

Freddy couldn’t help wondering: since the million bucks was off-limits, if they made back some—or all—of this “fun money” operating the food truck, would they buy a bigger house, where he might get his very own room? If Freddy ever sold some of his art to a fancy gallery or some rich art-collector lady, he had plenty of ideas for how to spend his million bucks. A house with a basketball hoop, maybe. Definitely a pool. An elaborate, thirteen-story tree house. And a butler!

For now, though, he would settle for his personal grand prize: no summer school. Freddy had been trying to act like going to summer school was no big deal. But deep down, he hated that he was the only Peach kid being forced to go. He was the only member of the family who had ever failed a math test, which made him a full-on failure. He was all art and creativity and big ideas and fun facts, while his siblings and Dad were focused and