Age:
High School
Reading Level: 4.0
Chapter 1
Joshua answered his cell phone. "Hello?"
"Hi Buckwheat. It's me, Davy. Can you come get me?"
"I suppose. Where are you?"
"Out in the middle of Round Pond."
Joshua paused for a moment as he developed a mental picture of this. "Um, what are you doing in the middle of the pond?"
"Drifting around."
"Where are the oars?"
"Back at the dock. There wasn't any room for them."
Joshua puzzled over this. "What do you mean, no room? That rowboat will hold four of us!"
"Yeah," Davy agreed. "But the generator takes up a lot of room."
Chapter 2
"The generator? Davy, why do you have a generator in the boat?"
"To power Mom's egg beater."
Joshua was beginning to regret answering the phone, but he pressed on. "So why are you adrift in the middle of the pond in the rowboat with a generator and an egg beater?"
"I don't have the egg beater anymore, so now I'm stuck."
"Why, where's the egg beater?"
"At the bottom of the pond."
This didn't make any sense to Joshua, but then again, most of the things Davy did never made any sense. "I know I'm going to regret asking this, but WHY is it at the bottom of the pond?"
Chapter 3
"Because I dropped it," stated Davy matter-of-factly.
"Hold on, let's back up a bit. What was the purpose of all this?"
"I saw it on an old Captain Kangaroo rerun this morning...Mr. Baxter had a hand-powered egg beater that he hung over the stern of a boat to propel it. It looked like a pretty good idea, but Mom only had an electric one, so I had to load the generator into the boat to power it. I was doing pretty good until I dropped the egg beater. It came unplugged out of the extension cord and went to the bottom."
"Davy, you need to stop watching all those old kid programs."
"I know, but there weren't any cartoons on."
"So you want me to come and rescue you?"
"Yeah, that and I need a lift into town to get a new egg beater before Mom gets home so I don't catch hell. Can I borrow twenty bucks?"