Amelia Bedelia Cleans Up Read online

  Dedication

  For Dr. Gupta and Dr. Roychowdhury—

  thanks a “lot”!—H. P.

  For my parents—thank you!—L. A.

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Breezy? Yes. Easy? No . . .

  Chapter 2: Happy Landing

  Chapter 3: Big Idea, Big Trouble

  Chapter 4: One Man’s Trash

  Chapter 5: Getting a Lot Done

  Chapter 6: Suddenly for Sale

  Chapter 7: Stuck in the Mud

  Chapter 8: A Perfect Lot

  Chapter 9: Minsk and Timbuktu

  Chapter 10: A New Explorer

  Chapter 11: Another Woman’s Treasure

  Chapter 12: Here’s to Amelia Bedelia!

  Two Ways to Say It, by Amelia Bedelia

  Back Ads

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Amelia Bedelia was as free as a bird. She was pedaling her bike as fast as she could. The wind was blowing in her face and blowing her hair straight back. Now she understood why Finally, her dog, loved to hang her head out the car window on trips. Amelia Bedelia really wished that every day was this easy and breezy.

  Today she was riding all over town with her friends Holly and Heather. They zipped through the park, zooming past babies in strollers and woofing at the dogs out for a walk. The dogs woofed right back.

  “Let’s go this way!” shouted Holly.

  “Follow me!” yelled Heather.

  Amelia Bedelia raced after her friends. As she rode, she imagined changing her name to Amelia Breezelia, Club President!

  She had been the president for about ten minutes. Most clubs come with leaders and followers, with a bunch of rules and regulations. But this club was so new that it didn’t even have a name. It had been born in Amelia Bedelia’s backyard when Holly and Heather had stopped by an hour earlier.

  “I’m bored,” Holly had said.

  “Me too,” said Heather.

  “We’ve got bikes,” said Amelia Bedelia. “Let’s go exploring. We can start an explorers’ club!”

  “Not just exploring,” said Heather. “Let’s have adventures.”

  “Let’s make it our job to have adventures,” said Holly.

  “Let’s start the Explorers’ Adventure Club,” said Heather.

  “How about the Adventuring Explorers’ Club?” said Holly.

  Amelia Bedelia just wanted to stop talking and get going, so she made a suggestion. “Let’s call it Our Club until we come up with a good name. And let’s have a rule. One rule.”

  “What rule?” asked Holly.

  “No being bored!” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “Yes!” said Holly and Heather together.

  “That’s settled,” said Holly. “Now we need to choose a president.”

  “I vote for me,” said Heather.

  “I vote for me too!” said Holly.

  They turned to Amelia Bedelia to cast the tie-breaking vote.

  “You’re leaving me no choice,” said Amelia Bedelia. “I have to vote for the smartest, prettiest, most adventuresome explorer I know.”

  Holly and Heather looked at each other. Then they looked back at Amelia Bedelia. Then they asked, “Who?”

  “Me!” said Amelia Bedelia.

  They all fell over laughing.

  “But can we really all be president at the same time?” asked Holly, still giggling.

  “We should rotate,” said Heather.

  “Sure,” said Amelia Bedelia. She stood up, turned around in a circle, then sat back down. “My dog does that when she comes into a room and sits.”

  “I mean,” said Heather, “we should take turns.”

  “Okay, you’re next,” Amelia Bedelia said.

  Holly and Heather stood up, turned in a circle, and sat back down. Then they fell against each other, laughing some more.

  Heather stopped giggling long enough to ask, “Where should our club meet?”

  “We could meet here, in my backyard,” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “But we’re an explorers’ club,” said Holly. “We have to get out and see new places!”

  “Do new things!” agreed Heather.

  “Find a cool clubhouse!” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “Yeah!” said Holly. “Where we can relax and hang out.”

  They all went back to thinking.

  Heather and Holly were thinking about where they could build a clubhouse. Amelia Bedelia was wondering what was so relaxing about hanging out laundry.

  “Hey,” she said, suddenly. “What is our club all about?”

  “Having adventures,” said Heather.

  “Right,” said Amelia Bedelia. “So let’s have an adventure. Let’s go exploring and discover a clubhouse.”

  No one had to say another word. They jumped on their bikes, and away they went.

  Their adventure took them all over town. But they didn’t find any place that seemed just right for a clubhouse. Finally they turned back toward home.

  Amelia Bedelia was bringing up the rear as they biked down Pleasant Street, in the oldest neighborhood in town. She slowed down to gaze at the largest house.

  It was three stories tall, with skinny windows covered with dark curtains. The paint was peeling, the roof was sagging, and one window on the top floor was cracked. A black cat sat on the front steps and narrowed yellow eyes at Amelia Bedelia as she rode by.

  It looked exactly like a haunted house on a TV show. Amelia Bedelia pedaled faster to get past it and catch up with Holly and Heather.

  Her two friends were way ahead, about to turn left. Next to the spooky house was a large vacant lot with an enormous oak tree in the center.

  Holly and Heather disappeared around the corner. That was when Amelia Bedelia made an adventurous decision.

  Making a sharp left too, she jumped the curb and headed straight into the vacant lot to cut across it diagonally. If she raced through the lot, she could catch up with Holly and Heather.

  It was tough to keep her bike rolling over lumpy dirt and knee-high grass. But Amelia Bedelia just pedaled harder. In a few seconds, she would burst out of the bushes ahead of Heather and Holly.

  Just as she stood up on her pedals to go as fast as possible, her front tire wedged between a rock and a branch. The front wheel of her bike stopped, but her back wheel kept on going. So did Amelia Bedelia, sailing over her handlebars.

  She felt the wind rushing past her ears. Time seemed to slow down, as if she were watching herself in slow motion, soaring free as a bird. Flying upside down certainly was breezy, she thought. But Amelia Bedelia knew that her landing was not going to be easy.

  Amelia Bedelia rolled over and opened her eyes. She was lying flat on her back. Out of her right eye, she saw a bright blue sky. Her left eye was looking up into an enormous canopy of green leaves. She had flown for just a few seconds, but here she was looking at the same thing every bird looks at every day—blue sky to soar through and branches to rest on.

  She checked herself over to see if anything was broken.

  She knew that her two eyes still worked. She lifted her right arm and then her left arm. Okay so far. She lifted her left leg and then her right one. Check. Slowly she sat up and looked around. She was in much better shape than her bike.

  Her bike was busted. The front wheel was twisted into something like a figure eight.

  “Amelia Bedelia?” shouted Heather.

  “Amelia Bedelia!” yelled Holly.

  She could hear them, so Amelia Bedelia figured that her ears must be okay too. She answered, “Over here!”

  Heather and Holly dropped their bikes on the sidewalk and came running through the empty lot. When they saw Amelia Bedelia next to h
er crunched bike, they hurried to kneel down beside her.

  “Are you okay?” said Holly.

  “Why did you ride through this junky lot?” Heather asked.

  “I was trying to take a shortcut,” answered Amelia Bedelia. She looked at her left knee. It was scraped. She looked at her right elbow. It was bloody. “Only I’m the one who got cut,” she added. “From now on, I’m taking only long cuts.” Maybe that didn’t sound very adventurous, but it would be safer.

  “We would have waited for you,” said Heather.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get really hurt,” said Holly. “You could have landed on this!” She held up something that looked like a giant rusty corkscrew.

  “Or that!” said Heather. She pointed to a board with nails in it.

  There was junk everywhere. Amelia Bedelia hadn’t seen it when she had decided to ride through the empty lot, because the long grass and scrubby bushes hid all the trash. But it was there, all right.

  “Yikes,” said Holly. “Maybe adventure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “My bike helmet isn’t cracked either,” said Amelia Bedelia. She took it off and patted it affectionately. “I’m glad I had it on.”

  Holly helped Amelia Bedelia get to her feet.

  Amelia Bedelia hopped a few steps and decided that her sore knee was not too bad. She could walk on it. And that was good, because it looked like she would have to walk home.

  “Let’s go,” said Heather. “I don’t like this old lot. And that house is spooky.”

  “You don’t like the lot?” asked Amelia Bedelia. “But it’s perfect!”

  She looked around. So did her friends. They saw:

  Tall grass.

  Big rocks.

  Broken bricks.

  Crumbling cinder blocks.

  Empty cans.

  Bits of metal.

  Twists of wire.

  Old tires.

  Falling-apart chairs.

  And a giant oak tree.

  Amelia Bedelia limped to the tree. The trunk was so wide her arms could not reach all the way around it. It was so tall that it rose above the houses on either side of the lot. The leaves and branches were so thick that when Amelia Bedelia tipped her head back, she could not see the sky.

  “Perfect?” asked Holly. “Perfect for what?”

  “For our new clubhouse!” said Amelia Bedelia. “Our explorers’ clubhouse!”

  Heather looked at Holly. Holly looked at Heather. Heather and Holly both looked at Amelia Bedelia.

  “Maybe you’d better sit back down,” said Holly. “I think you might have hit your head harder than you thought. Are you sure your helmet isn’t cracked?”

  “I am fine,” Amelia Bedelia said. “And so is my helmet. And so is this tree! This is where we should have our clubhouse—a tree house clubhouse.”

  Holly looked up. So did Heather. Holly started to grin. So did Heather.

  “We could get up and down with a ladder,” said Holly.

  “How about climbing a rope?” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “A rope ladder,” said Heather.

  “Great,” said Holly. “We could pull it up after us and be completely on our own. Like we were on a desert island!”

  “We could have windows,” said Heather.

  “A telescope,” said Holly. “So we can see what’s happening all over town.”

  “A hammock!” said Heather. “So we can lie in the sun.”

  “A roof,” said Holly. “So we can rest in the shade.”

  “A slide for getting down!” said Heather.

  “Or a pole for sliding down!” said Holly.

  “It’s perfect!” said Heather. “Even though you found it by accident, Amelia Bedelia.”

  “It wasn’t that bad an accident,” said Amelia Bedelia, rubbing her sore elbow. “And it was totally worth it.”

  At dinnertime, Amelia Bedelia let her parents in on her idea. She could tell that it was a great idea by how much she was waving her arms around as she told them all about the new club, the vacant lot, and the plans for a tree house. Waving arms always meant that something exciting was about to happen.

  But for her parents, Amelia Bedelia’s waving arms were a warning, setting off alarm bells, buzzers, and whistles.

  “We’ll have a rope ladder to get up into the tree house!” Amelia Bedelia said. “We’ll have a telescope and windows and a hammock and a balcony! Won’t it be great?” She took a big bite of her chicken drumstick and beamed at her mom and dad.

  “Well, sweetness,” said her mother, “I must say . . .”

  But she didn’t say anything. She looked over at her husband, and she arched her right eyebrow in secret parent code. Then she added, “This plan sounds . . . What’s the word I’m searching for, honey?”

  Amelia Bedelia’s father put his fork down. “Unbelievable,” he said.

  “I knew you’d like it!” said Amelia Bedelia. “It’s perfect for us!”

  Her father tilted his head so he could look right at her. “Of all the dangerous, hazardous, perilous—”

  Amelia Bedelia kept hearing “us” at the end of every word. She interrupted him.

  “When I said ‘us,’ I didn’t mean you and me and Mom. Us three girls can handle it.”

  “Ridiculous!” said her father. “You girls are not going to handle anything in that empty lot!” said her father.

  “It’s not empty,” explained Amelia Bedelia. “It’s full of trash and stuff.”

  “Exactly!” said her father.

  “Honey,” said Amelia Bedelia’s mother, “your dad does not think this is a good idea at all, and I don’t think you’re going to convince him. You’re banging your head against a stone wall here.”

  “I didn’t bang my head on anything,” said Amelia Bedelia. “Just my elbow and my knee, and I banged them on the ground, not a wall.”

  “You banged your knee?” her father asked. “You banged your elbow? How? Where? What happened?”

  Amelia Bedelia stood up to show off the scrapes on her elbow and knee, and explained how she had done a somersault over her bike.

  “Treacherous!” exclaimed her father.

  Amelia Bedelia sat down again. She was beginning to get the idea that “us” words were not the friends of explorers. Except, of course, for “adventurous.”

  “Honey,” said her mother, “your dad is right. That lot is no place for children to play. Look what happened to you already. It’s not safe.”

  “I know,” agreed Amelia Bedelia. “That’s why we have to clean it up!”

  Amelia Bedelia could see that her parents still didn’t understand. So she followed her number-one rule: she turned to her mother and asked a question.

  “Aren’t you always telling me we need a sense of community? To give something back to where we are?”

  Her mother’s eyebrows went up.

  “Pleasant Street is just a couple of blocks away. Isn’t that our community?”

  Her mother’s eyebrows made two tall arches. Her father put his elbows on the table and leaned his forehead on his hands. He sighed.

  This, thought Amelia Bedelia, was progress. Time for one more question. “Can’t we give back by taking away? Collecting all that junk and recycling and getting rid of the rest?”

  Her father sighed again.

  “We need to think about this for a minute,” Amelia Bedelia’s mother said. “Any more questions?”

  “Yes,” Amelia Bedelia said. “Would you please pass the kale?”

  She knew that question would make her mother happy. Every time her mother served them kale, Amelia Bedelia and her father got a lecture about why it was so good for you, along with a helping of the dark green leaves.

  Smiling, her mother passed the kale and watched in delight as Amelia Bedelia piled it on her plate. Her father watched carefully. The more kale Amelia Bedelia ate, the less there would be for him.

  Amelia Bedelia chewed and chewed. She tried not to think about what she was
eating or how it tasted. Her parents had stopped eating altogether and were staring at each other. They must have been saying things in secret parent code that Amelia Bedelia had not yet worked out, because suddenly her mom spoke.

  “All right,” said her mother. “You and your friends can clean up that lot. I don’t know who owns it, but whoever it is, they haven’t done anything with it in years. I’m sure they won’t mind if the trash gets taken away. But grown-ups have to be there with you.” Then she turned to Amelia Bedelia’s father and said, “Honey, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind giving up your golf tournament this Saturday to help our daughter give back to our community, right?”

  Amelia Bedelia’s father closed his eyes and made a face. He looked as if the idea of giving up his golf game was even more bitter than kale.

  “Sweetie, you’re asking a whole lot,” he said to Amelia Bedelia.

  “Of course,” Amelia Bedelia agreed. “It wouldn’t be any good to clean up just part of the lot. But don’t worry. With everyone working together, I’m sure we can clean it up in no time!”

  On Saturday morning, Amelia Bedelia and her parents loaded rakes and shovels, clippers and recycling bins into their car.

  First they stopped by a hardware store to get bags for the trash and gloves to protect their hands. “You come back, now!” the clerk called as they walked out the door.

  “Okay,” said Amelia Bedelia. She turned around and headed right back into the store. “Why did you want me to come back?” she asked the clerk. “Did we forget something?”