1 "Clam tide!" my brother yelled as he leaped out of bed and threw on his clothes. I got up and peeked out the window. The water was so far out that it looked like a shiny silver line beyond the beach.
2 "Can I go?" I asked, stifling a yawn and trying hard to look wide awake.
3 "Naw," he said. He laced up his old tennis shoes. "It’s hard work, and you’re too little." The door banged as he rushed out.
4 "Mama-a-a!" I hollered in my loudest, saddest voice. "Kelly won’t take me clam digging." I
started to cry because I was disappointed, but mostly because I was mad at my brother.
5 Soon I was following him down to the tide flats. I had to walk fast, because now my brother was mad at me. He swung the bucket in one hand and held the clam shovel in the other, and I could tell by the way he took giant steps that he wished I was home. But Mom had said I could go.
6 "Hurry up," he said, without turning around. "The tide won’t stay out all day, you know." When we got to the edge of the beach, the ground was covered with rocks and smelled like rotten seaweed and dead barnacles. We hiked down the slope toward the water.
7 Beyond the rocky beach the tide flats were muddy. It was the oozy kind of mud that sucks off your shoes if you stand too long in one place. I had a hard time hurrying through that stuff, and so did Kelly. Once, he had to stop and slowly, carefully pull his foot up so he wouldn’t lose a shoe. I giggled at the sound it made coming out. My brother gave me a nasty look.
8 After that his feet kept getting stuck, so he tried tiptoeing across the mud. Next he tried hopping. Then he tried running fast with little tiny steps. I followed him, imitating everything he did.
9 By the time we got to the clam-digging place, we were covered with blobs and splatters and teeny freckles of stinky black mud. My side hurt. I don’t know if it was from running or from too much laughing.
10 Kelly put one foot on the clam shovel and pushed it hard into the mud. "When I bring up a shovelful, your job is to look for clams." My brother liked to give me jobs. He heaved a huge, dripping pile of muck in front of me. It plopped all over my shoes.
11 I stuck my hands into the mess and began feeling for the hard little clams. "Got one!" I said. I rinsed off my prize in clean salt water. Kelly kept digging and plopping down the piles.
12 Clam by clam, the bucket began to fill. I was choosy about which ones to keep. If they were too big or too little, I tossed them into the shallow water nearby. The big ones splashed my brother.
13 "How many clams is that?" Kelly asked me as he flung down an especially gooey load.
14 "Fifty-three," I said. There was a rule that each person could only take thirty clams a day, so I was counting them. I felt through the new pile for a few more.
15 Now I was kneeling in three inches of water, separating clams from rocks as fast as I could. The tide is coming in," I said. My brother pretended to ignore me, but worked a little faster. His feet and legs were sunk down into the mud, and it made him look short. The water in the hole he had made was getting deeper.
16 "That’s sixty," I said, tossing the last clam into the bucket. "Thirty for you, thirty for me. Let’s go." I looked at my big brother and suddenly realized he was scared. Very scared.
17 "I’m stuck," he said. He was trying to sound brave.
18 "Pull one foot up and then the other." The water around my own ankles made me nervous.
19 "I already tried it." He squirmed and tried it again. The more he moved, the deeper he went.
20 "Dig in your shovel, and pull yourself out," I said. He tried it. The shovel fell over.
21 "It’s too mushy. It won’t work!" He didn’t sound brave anymore. I looked around frantically for firm ground away from the hole and the loose mud. I wished I was big enough to pull him out. I wished it was me stuck in the mud instead of Kelly.
22 A few feet away, the ground wasn’t as gooey. The water came to just above my ankles. I quickly skinned off my jeans and stood there in my bathing suit.
23 "What are you doing? Are you crazy?" Now my brother’s voice sounded funny. He was crying. I threw him the legs of my jeans.
24 "You pull on that end, and I’ll pull on this end." I took hold of the top end.
25 "You’re not strong enough!" he cried. "I’ll pull you over." But then he tried. I didn’t fall over. I sank down into the mud.
26 "Keep pulling!" I screamed at him. It took a while, but soon I could see it was working. Kelly was climbing hand over hand, up my jeans and out of his hole, and I was sinking farther into mine. I held on. The water crept up around my hips.
27 "Yahhhh!" Kelly yelled as he pulled free. He scrambled up and got his footing. He took two big splashing steps and stood above me. "It’s OK. Don’t be scared."
28 My brother grabbed me under the arms and pulled so hard it hurt. For one horrible second, nothing happened. Then the mud let go.
29 He lifted me up and hugged me. He pressed his cheek against mine, and all our tears and dirty freckles smeared together. "Let’s get away from here," he said. He carried me out of the water and beyond the reach of the tide.
30 Kelly put me down gently and started across the flats. This time I didn’t walk behind him, and we didn’t hurry. The bucket, the clams, the shovel, my old blue jeans–all were lost and forgotten.
31 We didn’t talk much on the way home, but we squeezed hands a couple of times and grinned a lot. Whenever one of our feet got stuck in the mud, we laughed together at the funny sound it made coming out.
Copyright © 1991 by Highlights for Children, Inc., Columbus, Ohio.
A. He would have to share his clams with her.
B. He thought she would tell where he dug his clams.
C. He was afraid that she would get hurt.
D. He thought she was too little and could not help.
A. grassy
B. steep
C. slippery
D. gooey
A. She wanted only the big clams.
B. She could only carry one bucket at a time.
C. Many of the clams were dirty.
D. There was a limit on the number they could keep.
A. freckles.
B. muck.
C. barnacles.
D. seaweed.
A. He dug too many clams.
B. He fell into a clam hole.
C. The bucket weighed too much.
D. The tide was coming in.
A. high tide.
B. low tide.
C. rip tide.
D. red tide.
A. tall tales.
B. fairy tales.
C. ancient myths.
D. realistic fiction.
| The water came to just above my ankles |
The SUBJECT of this sentence is
A. water.
B. came.
C. above.
D. ankles.