by Linda Davick
The Pink Seashell Pipes Up
But I couldn’t talk. Soon everybody came over and huddled around me. They gave me a five-person hug.
“Mimi, please don’t cry,” said Yoshi softly.
Then I really broke down. Yoshi was talking to me!
“This is crazy!” I sobbed. “Why are you all being so nice to me?”
“Because you wanted to share the treasure with us!” said Sofie, smoothing my hair.
“But there isn’t any treasure!”
Tonya rolled her eyes. She handed me a tissue. I blew my nose.
Yoshi said, “Mimi, don’t you remember Nobody’s birthday party?”
“What about it?”
“We all shared presents with one another. It was so much fun!”
“And it didn’t matter what the presents were,” said Sofie. “Yoshi gave me a rock!”
“It was a special rock!” insisted Yoshi.
This time we all laughed. We couldn’t stop.
“Wait a sec,” said Hunter. He picked up the pink seashell from the mantel and held it to his ear. His eyes almost popped out. “Mimi! Listen!” He presented the shell to me on his baseball glove.
I held it to my ear. The shell was laughing. It must have heard everything we said.
Everyone crowded around me again to listen to the shell. Before I passed it to Yoshi, I changed ears and I swear the shell said,
You have something more precious than gold.
At first I thought the shell needed glasses. I dropped down on my hands and knees and looked under the bed just to make sure I hadn’t overlooked a diamond or an emerald.
Then I stood up. I saw Yoshi and all the rest of the Gum Club members staring back at me with shining eyes.
“Well,” I said. “I guess being back with the Gum Club ain’t too shabby.”
“Isn’t too shabby,” said Tonya.
A Surprise
Monday morning Mr. Dayberry told us Hunter had an announcement to make.
Hunter stood up. “Remember when I made a fort for Cheerio out of my old baseball cap? Today I found six babies in the fort!”
We all gasped. Quietly we made a line and tiptoed up to take a peek. They didn’t look like rats. None of them had any fur. They were pink. One had three big dots on its skin. The dots made me laugh.
“Whose babies are they?” I asked. We all knew Cheerio was a boy.
“We must have been mistaken about Cheerio’s gender,” said Mr. Dayberry.
“Who’s the dad then?” asked Tonya. “There has to be a dad.”
“Maybe Cheerio and Rufus got married during spring training,” said Sofie.
Normal
Things were finally shifting back to normal. I never realized how terrific just plain normal could be.
Hunter told me that because I liked dots, he was going to name the spotted baby rat after me. “Only since she has three dots, I’m naming her Mi-mi-mi.”
Yesterday somebody, probably Boris, left a box of chocolate-covered raisins in my mailbox.
And Sofie asked me to go horseback riding! Since I’ve never ridden a horse before, she said we’d ride double. She would sit behind me to make sure I didn’t fall off.
Tonya slid a note under my door. Even though it smelled good, at first I was afraid to read it.
Loose Ends
The Big Dig will continue. For now, Sofie’s dorm room has a card table with a deck of cards and a pillow. So even though she still can’t sneak over every night, at least she can climb up there on Wednesday afternoons and play solitaire by flashlight underneath the table.
And despite the fact that he’ll bring us a suitcase full of presents, none of us wants to think about Uncle Albert coming. He hasn’t changed his mind about taking Yoshi away to Reading Boot Camp. For the whole summer.
But until that day, Yoshi’s back to carpooling with me and belting out “Every little thing gonna be all right” at the top of his lungs.
You know how I hate being wrong.
But the shell was right.
Even with no treasure chest in the picture, having my friends back makes me feel like a million bucks.
No, make that a million gold doubloons.
More from this Series
It's Not Easy Being Mimi
Book 1
About the Author
Linda Davick is the creator of the Mimi’s World series, and she has also illustrated several celebrated picture books, including the New York Times bestseller 10 Trick-or-Treaters by Janet Schulman, We Love You, Rosie! by Cynthia Rylant, and her own Say Hello! and I Love You, Nose! I Love You, Toes!
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Linda-Davick
Beach Lane Books
Simon & Schuster, New York
BEACH LANE BOOKS • An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Linda Davick
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Book design by Lauren Rille.
The illustrations for this book were rendered digitally.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data • Names: Davick, Linda, author, illustrator. • Title: Mimi’s treasure trouble / Linda Davick. • Description: First edition. | New York : Beach Lane Books, 2019. | Series: Mimi’s world ; 2 | Summary: Mimi and her fellow Gum Club members promise to always stick together, but they soon discover it is hard to keep a group of six friends united through thick and thin. • Identifiers: LCCN 2019000286 | ISBN 9781442458925 (hardback) | ISBN 9781442458949 (eBook) • Subjects: | CYAC: Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Clubs—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship. | JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Imagination & Play. • Classification: LCC PZ7.D2815 Mi 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019000286