More Brandon...

As promised, more of Brandon's Trouble, chapter 1:

Brandon’s mom arrived home early from work. She stood in the kitchen preparing an early dinner, which looked like it had a lot of vegetables in it.

“Hi there, Sweetie.”

“Hey mom,” Brandon replied as he reached for a shoebox he had placed on a nearby shelf.

“How was school today, Sweetie?” she asked while chopping a carrot into small pieces.

“We cleaned and stuff.” Brandon replied now sitting at the kitchen table sorting his baseball cards by team.

“Oh I love stuff. Stuff, stuff, stuff,”

Brandon put his baseball cards down and smiled at his mom. Brandon’s mom always wanted to know what was going on at school. She never liked it when he said he said “stuff”. She figured it was because he was trying to hide something (Which was the case when Brandon lost his watch on the playground and the time he earned a C- on his big President’s Test). But today there was nothing to hide; he was just being lazy with his words.

“Well, Mr. Davenport had us do a lot of cleaning,” Brandon continued working on his cards and matched two Yankees together.

“Oh really?” she relplied with a bit of a smile on her face, “Well, at least he can get you clean.”

“Yeah,” Brandon blushed remembering his laundry he didn’t put away. “Oh, and I finished coloring my map of South America and I made a painting of the Amazon Rainforest for tonight.”

“Now that’s worth seeing.” Brandon’s mom unpacked a few more unknown vegetables on to the counter.

“It’s ok, I guess... Patricia said it looks like an elephant painted it. But when I told that to Mr. Davenport what he said he’d never met an elephant who knew how to paint Brazil the way I did.”

Brandon’s mom smiled and dropped the now chopped vegetables into a large black pot on the stove.

“I don’t know anything about elephants who paint, but I once knew an elephant who could dance ballet.”

“Mom!” Brandon chuckled.

“Well, elephants or not, I must say I’m excited to peek into the forth grade classes. I can’t believe you are already going into the fourth grade!”

“Not for three months. Remember summer comes first!” Brandon couldn’t believe his mother was already thinking about the next school year! She was just like Mr. Davenport. Brandon had barely started to plan his summer of baseball games and sleepovers and she was already thinking about school.

Brandon’s mom finished adding ingredients to what looked like a vegetable soup before she reminded him that Brandon he would need to get washed up for Open House.

Open House was always a lot of fun, but he felt like he was on show, like one of those little dogs on the Thanksgiving Day shows. His mom would want to parade him in front of the judges—the teachers—and tell them all of the great things he knew how to do. At least dogs got treats.

And unbeknownst to Brandon, this year things would be different at Open House, for this is where all of the trouble began.