Read an Excerpt

The Ya-Ya

On Monday morning at little lunch, Atticus sat down. Opened his blue lunch box. Looked inside. Slammed it shut again. Then just sat there, making a disgusted face like he’d drunk a whole jar of dirty art room paintbrush-cleaning water.
On Tuesday morning, Atticus sat down at little lunch. Opened his blue lunch box. Looked inside. Slammed it shut again. Made an even more disgusted face, like he’d sniffed a pair of Tamara Noodle’s sports socks right after a field day.
On Wednesday morning, it happened again. Atticus sat down at little lunch, opened his blue lunch box, looked inside, slammed it shut.
He made the most disgusted face anyone could make, like he’d licked a garbage can. The inside of a garbage can. Right down at the bottom where all the goopy stuff goes.
Usually Atticus loved eating food at little lunch. He loved eating food more than anything.
What was going on? Was he feeling sick? Was he on a diet? Was there something inside the lunch box that was freaking him out?
Maybe there was a family of cockroaches running around in there.
Or an angry rat, curled up in the corner?
Only Atticus knew the truth. And the truth was his parents had gone away for week. His mom had a work conference in New Zealand, and his dad had never been to New Zealand, so his dad went too. Which meant . . . Atticus had to be looked after by his . . . ya-ya.
A ya-ya is not a small round toy that spins on a string — that’s a yo-yo. And a ya-ya is not what cowboys yell out to their horses — that’s “Yah YAHHHH!” And a ya-ya is not what you say when your parents tell you to clean your room and you’re not really listening. That’s “Yeahhhh . . . yeahhhhhhhh . . .”
Ya-Ya is the name Atticus calls his grandmother. Because his grandmother comes from a country where all grandmothers are called Ya-Ya.
A country far, far away . . . where they make lunches that smell really weird.
Atticus loved everything about his ya-ya, except for her cooking. And all week long she’d been putting some pretty weird food in his lunch box. It was always the same small, brown, smelly wrap things. They looked bad, they smelled strange, and he had no idea what they even were. Were they made from some kind of vegetable that had been pickled in a jar for a hundred years?
Were they made out of meat from an animal that people don’t normally eat? A bear? Or a mongoose? Or something slimy that lived in a swamp?
All he knew for sure was he didn’t want to eat those small, brown, SMELLY wrap things. Why couldn’t his ya-ya give him normal lunch box food like his parents always gave him?
Something simple and delicious like a cheese stick or some slices of bread and butter. Something that didn’t look like it had been scraped off the bottom of someone’s shoe after a walk in a dog park.
What made the lunch box problem way, way worse was . . . when Atticus didn’t eat, he got hungry, and when he got hungry, he got grumpy.
VERY GRUMPY.
For the last few days he’d been snapping at his friends for no good reason at all. Just yesterday he was sitting next to Melanie in art class, and he yelled at her, “Who said you could use my pencil, Melanie?”
“This is my pencil,” she told him.
Atticus yelled again, “HOW CAN YOU BE SO SURE?”
Melanie held up the pencil. “Because it’s pink with unicorns and sparkles and has my name written on the side!”
Atticus kept yelling. “OK, THEN! I’M SORRY FOR MAKING A MISTAKE! KEEP DRAWING! THAT’S A NICE DRAWING OF A PARROT BY THE WAY! REALLY GOOD WORK, MELANIE!”
On Thursday morning, Atticus sat down at little lunch. Opened his blue lunch box. Looked inside. Yep, the same small, brown, smelly wrap things. He didn’t know what to do with them, so he sneaked over to the school worm farm beside the teachers’ parking lot and secretly dumped them into a worm bin.
 “Sorry, worms,” he whispered into the bin. “I hope this doesn’t kill you. If it does, don’t blame me. Blame my ya-ya.”
Friday was Friday Treat Day, when everyone was allowed to bring their favorite treats to school. Atticus didn’t bring his blue lunch box to school with him — he left it at home accidentally-on-purposely.
Then when everyone sat down for little lunch, he put on a fake-shocked face and said, “Oh, no! I left my lunch box at home! I have nothing to eat today! What am I going to do?”