Page 46 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade6_Flipbook

aCTIvITy 1.5
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4 My dad tried to stop her. “Hey!” he says as she’s catapulting herself on board. “What are you doing? You’re getting mud everywhere!” So true, too. Her shoes were, like, caked with the stuff.
5 She didn’t hop out, though. Instead, she planted her rear end on the floor and started pushing a big box with her feet. “Don’t you want some help?” She glanced my way. “It sure looks like you need it.”
6 I didn’t like the implication. And even though my dad had been tossing me the same sort of look all week, I could tell—he didn’t like this girl either. “Hey! Don’t do that,” he warned her. “There are some really valuable things in that box.”
7 “Oh. Well, how about this one?” She scoots over to a box labeled LENOX and looks my way again. “We should push it together!”
8 “No, no, no!” my dad says, then pulls her up by the arm. “Why don’t you run along home? Your mother’s probably wondering where you are.”
9 This was the beginning of my soon-to-become-acute awareness that the girl cannot take a hint. Of any kind. Does she zip on home like a kid should when they’ve been invited to leave? No. She says, “Oh, my mom knows where I am. She said it was fine.” Then she points across the street and says, “We just live right over there.”
10 My father looks to where she’s pointing and mutters, “Oh boy.” Then he looks at me and winks as he says, “Bryce, isn’t it time for you to go inside and help your mother?”
11 I knew right off that this was a ditch play. And I didn’t think about it until later, but ditch wasn’t a play I’d run with my dad before. Face it, pulling a ditch is not something discussed with dads. It’s like, against parental law to tell your kid it’s okay to ditch someone, no matter how annoying or muddy they might be.
12 But there he was, putting the play in motion, and man, he didn’t have to wink twice. I smiled and said, “Sure thing!” then jumped off the liftgate and headed for my new front door.
13 I heard her coming after me but I couldn’t believe it. Maybe it just sounded like she was chasing me; maybe she was really going the other way. But before I got up the nerve to look, she blasted right past me, grabbing my arm yanking me along.
14 This was too much. I planted myself and was about to tell her to get lost when the weirdest thing happened. I was making this big windmill motion to break away from her, but somehow on the downswing my hand wound up tangling into hers. I couldn’t believe it. There I was, holding the mud monkey’s hand!
15 I tried to shake her off, but she just clamped on tight and yanked me along, saying, “C’mon!”
16 My mom came out of the house and immediately got the world’s sappiest look on her face. “Well, hello,” she says to Juli.
Grammar USaGe
Reflexive and Intensive Pronouns
Words like myself, yourself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves can be used as reflexive or intensive pronouns, depending on how they are used in a sentence.
A reflexive pronoun is used as an object and refers back to the subject of the sentence.
Example: “. . . as she’s catapulting herself on board.”
An intensive pronoun adds emphasis to a noun in the sentence. It can be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence.
Example: “I sent my complaint to the president of the company himself.”
my Notes
Unit 1 • Stories of Change 19
catapult: to quickly move up or ahead in position
implication: an idea suggested, not directly stated; something implied
immediately: right away; without delay
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