The caterpillar on picture day*

The crisp autumn air wafted in from the windows and the early morning light shone as I turned onto the other side of my pillow. Then I screamed. There was a CATERPILLAR on the pillow next to me! 

I shook my sister and said, “There’s a caterpillar on the pillow!”

Then she said, “That’s a NAPKIN, Lucy, a napkin. You know, you have quite the penchant for fibbing.”

I whirled my head around, and behold, a napkin was in the place where the caterpillar had been! Then, once I had gone back into my bed, the caterpillar moved into the bathroom. 

I shook my sister again and said, “The caterpillar got into the bathroom!” 

She tuned me out until the caterpillar slithered all the way to her foot!

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”   she screamed as she shook the caterpillar off of her foot and tried to smash it with a dictionary. The caterpillar slithered away just in time though, so she chased it all over the house with the dictionary, trying to squash the caterpillar, but all her efforts were in vain. 

Then the phone rang, and I leaped up the stairs two at a time to get it. I answered the phone. “Hello,” I said while looking everywhere for the caterpillar.

“How are you doing?” My mom asked.

“Good,” I answered nervously., “So when are you coming back?”

“8:00 a.m.,” she said while on the road., “So, are you prepared to go to the bus stop?”

Then I suddenly remembered that the bus was coming in 15 minutes.

“Yes,” I lied as I got my school clothes and started putting them on. 

“I got the caterpillar!” my sister yelled from the living room.

I started getting ready for school as the seconds went by.

Three minutes later, I leaped down the stairs, and my sister was ready to go. She had probably gotten up an hour earlier to get her school clothes on and her backpack ready.

“Well, come on!” she said, “we don’t have all the time in the world!”

I looked at the clock and we had exactly 12 minutes to get to the bus stop before the bus came. Then I ran upstairs to get my backpack, which I had forgotten about while I was getting ready for school. Then I ran downstairs and opened the door to the garage and then opened the garage door and started running to the bus stop with my sister. Every school day, my sister and I run across the neighborhood, around the back of the neighborhood, then go around the roundabout to get to the parking lot of the park, which is where our bus stops. We ran across the neighborhood when I saw our bus coming earlier than usual. The sun was almost done rising and the wing was blowing when my sister tripped on her foot. 

“Are you okay? ”I asked, now walking.

“I’m okay,” she said as she got back up and started running again.

As we ran across the neighborhood, one of our neighbor’s dogs started chasing us. We ran faster than ever before. We ran around the roundabout when our neighbor ran up and picked up the dog.

 “She just likes kids,” our neighbor said with a faint smile.

We continued to run across the roundabout and ran to the park.

As we entered the parking lot, my sister said, “It’s picture day.”

“What?” I said.

“You didn’t know,” she said “your sweater is inside out, your shirt is on backwards, and your shoelaces are untied.”

I looked down at my feet, feeling ashamed. 

The bus came around the corner and stopped at the parking lot as the sun glared down on us. We walked across the parking lot and got on the bus. I asked, “So why did the bus come early today?”

“There was a bus route change,” she said  “It was in the email sent out yesterday”

I thought that it would be nice to get to school on time for once.

Then, as if she had read my mind, she said, “A lot of parents must have complained about the orange bus not being able to get to school on time”

The bus doors closed and started driving off to school.

*names have been changed to protect privacy