By Jennifer Cronin

I told Mom and Dad that there was a monster under my bed, but they didn’t believe me. And this wasn’t just any old scary bedtime monster, I had a genuine scary-hairy-spider monster. And it stank too. Like the kind of stink that comes from when Dad takes both the sports section and the auto section of the paper in the bathroom with him. And I told them this monster could make itself really big or really small depending on where it needed to go, like when I saw it come in through a hole in the window sill or when it walked right through my bedroom door as if it were leading a parade of nighttime creepy creatures. It’s a sneaky one. I also tried to tell them that it had been threatening to steal me away for days if I didn’t keep feeding it goldfish crackers. Which is why I threw an extra long fit when Mom wouldn’t let me have a snack tonight before bed.

But did they believe me? Nope. Not even for a second. Which is why I didn’t feel the least bit bad when they had to chase that scary-hairy-spider monster down the drain cuz it had a hold of me. And they had to figure out if the yelling was from miniature me caught in the drain or the shrieks of the scary-hairy-spider monster as Mom and Dad tried to keep it from getting away. And it got all its scary-hairy-spider juice on Mom’s nightgown. And Dad nearly barfed because of that scary-hairy-spider smell. Nope, I didn’t feel bad at all. Not one single bit.

*****

By Kyla Zoe Rafert

Today was my lucky day. I got the red handle on the parachute. I almost always get stuck with the yellow handle, but today in music class, when Mrs. Holden told us it was parachute time, I got to help her get it out, which meant I got the red handle before Ella Peters did. And everybody knows the red handle is best. I was so happy that when we whooshed our arms up and floated that parachute so high, I looked up at all those beautiful colors and fluttered my eyelashes like it was a rainbow waterfall about to come crashing down on me. And then, when we did our cave and tucked the edges under our bottoms, I even let Doug Masterson scooch in close to me so we could keep that parachute up so high with everyone giggling underneath it. But I did not let him hold my handle. No sharesies on that. Everyone knows that.