3 Bummer in the Summer!

Chapter 3 Bummer in the Summer! Nooooooooooooooo! Not Andrea! Why did it have to be Andrea? Anybody but Andrea! Weren't there any bank robbers or criminals we could share our beach house with? Little Miss Perfect Know-It-All is so annoying. She thinks she is really smart. I know she'll be hanging around me all summer, bothering me, and trying to show off how much she knows about everything. "Please don't let Andrea come here!" I begged my parents. "Please please please please?" Saying the word "please" over and over again will usually make grown-ups give you anything you want. Nobody knows why. But it didn't work this time.

"A.J., you be nice to Andrea," my mother told me. "Her mother and I are good friends." I don't get it. Why do I have to be friends with somebody just because her mom and my mom are friends? It's not fair. The next morning a car pulled into the driveway, and guess who got out? Little Miss Annoying and her parents! Andrea was wearing pink sunglasses and a bathing suit that had butterflies on it. "Hi, Arlo!" said Andrea, who calls me by my real name because she knows I don't like it. "Isn't this going to be a great summer?"

"It was gonna be a great summer," I said, "but then you showed up." "That's not nice, Arlo!" "Neither is your face," I told Andrea. My mother told me to be a gentleman and carry Andrea's suitcase upstairs for her. "What do you have in here, rocks?" I asked. "No, silly," Andrea said. "Books! It's my summer reading. Every summer I set a goal for myself. This year my goal is to read the complete works of Shakespeare."

"You're gonna read about a guy who shakes a spear?" I asked. "William Shakespeare is the most famous writer in history!" Andrea said. "If you opened a book once in a while, you'd know that, Arlo." "Hey, I opened a book once," I said. "And then I closed it." "Why?" she asked. "Because there were words inside." Andrea picked up one of her dumb Shakespeare books and started reading out loud: "'To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them.'" "Isn't that lovely, Arlo?" Andrea asked. "Zzzzzzzzzz," I said, pretending to be asleep. That Shakespeare guy made no sense at all. The question isn't to be or not to be. I'll tell you what the question is. Do you want ice cream or cake? That is the question. Trick biking or skateboarding? That is the question. TV or video games? That is the question. Would it be better if a piano or an elephant fell on Andrea's head? That is the question. Andrea lined up her dumb books on a shelf in ABC order. "Hey, maybe we can read together on the beach, Arlo!" Andrea said. "What did you bring for summer reading?"

Summer reading?! What is her problem? "Summer" and "reading" are two words that should never be put together in the same sentence. The only reading I brought was a comic book that I finished in the car. It was about a superhero named Mold Man who can turn his body into any shape. He's cool. I bet Mold Man would kick Shakespeare's butt. Andrea's mom said we could go to the beach as long as we came back in time for lunch. Then we'd have to wait an hour before we went swimming again. Mothers always make you wait an hour after you eat before you can go swimming. Nobody knows why. I guess sharks can smell the food in your stomach and will eat you to get it. I showed Andrea how to get to the beach. The backhoe was gone, but Mr. Sunny was