Read Online Church Camp Chaos by Annie Tipton - Free Book Online Page B

board game that ends up with a chain reaction in which you try to capture other players’ mice in a cage).

    And I’m pretty much the best at all of them.
    Here’s something you should know about me, Diary: I love playing games. Well, actually, I like winning DOMINATING games. Mom and Dad are always trying to get me to be a better winner, and I tell them I’m a great winner—I win all the time! But I guess that’s not what they mean by “better winner.”

    The truth is, Diary, it feels so good to rub the loser’s (Isaac’s) nose in his loss! Anyway, aren’t adults always saying that losing builds character or something like that?
    EJ
     
    EJ stuck out her tongue while she concentrated on cutting out a fifty-cent-off coupon for dish soap.
    “EJ, you don’t have to worry about the edges being perfectly straight,” Mom said as she filed a coupon in her binder.
    “I’m trying to make my coupons as perfect as Macy’s,” EJ said, breaking her concentration when the paper caught in the scissors, ripping the coupon in half. “Oh rats.”
    Perfectly cut coupons were just the beginning of the differences between EJ and her best friend. EJ wished she knew Macy’s secret to looking and acting so cool, calm, and collected. Macy’s shoes were always tied (EJ usually tripped over her shoelaces), Macy’s coffee-colored hair always lay perfectly in its adorable bob (EJ’s unruly not-quite-straight-but-not-quite-curly hair had a mind of its own).
    “I just try to take my time,” Macy said. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, though.”
    Macy laid a precisely cut paper rectangle on her stack of coupons on the Paynes’ kitchen table. EJ looked at the hot mess of paper in front of her and wrinkled her nose.
    “Will these still work even though they aren’t cut straight, Mrs. Russell?” EJ asked Macy’s mom.
    “As long as we can still see the complete scanner code, they’ll work just fine.” Mrs. Russell picked up the two halves of the ripped dish soap coupon in front of EJ. “This one just needs a little tape and it’ll be good as new—there!” She added the mended coupon to EJ’s pile.
    “You girls have been a big help cutting out the coupons,” Mom said. “Thank you.”
    “We’re done?” EJ looked at Mom expectantly. “Does that mean we can go outside and play?”
    “You may,” Mom said. “I’ll call you in when lunch is ready in a bit.”
    “Have fun in the new tree house, girls!” Mrs. Russell called as EJ and Macy made a beeline for the backyard.

    “That cloud looks like a snail—see its shell?” Macy pointed to the fluffy cloud through the tree house’s open sky hatch. The girls were lying on their backs in the beanbag chairs, looking for interesting clouds.
    “Good one!” EJ said. She pointed to a smaller dark cloud to the right of the snail. “I see a hummingbird there.”
    “This tree house is so great, EJ,” Macy said, sitting up and looking around the room. “I think I could live here.”
    “So, Miss Russell, what will it take to get you into this house today?” Realtor EJ smiles at her potential home buyer—a young gymnast and Olympic gold-medal winner looking for her very first home away from her parents’ house
.
    “Well, I’m not sure I need quite so much living space,” Macy says, looking uncertain. “It’s just me who will be living here. But I do really like this skylight that’s in the bedroom.”
    “Perfect for stargazing,” EJ says. “Let’s go take a peek at the gym. Surely that’s a must-have for every athlete.”
    The two walk downstairs to the fully furnished gym—uneven bars, pommel horse, balance beam, tumbling floor, and trampoline
.
    EJ sees Macy’s face brighten and the wheels turning in her brain
.
    “If this was my house, I could give lessons to boys and girls who might not have enough money to pay for lessons,” she says, already imagining a dozen little kids practicing their tumbling on the padded floor. Macy thrusts her hand toward