“Aren’t you forgetting something?” he

asked.

83

“What?” asked Ramona, knowing very well what.

“Dinner,” he said.

The question that had hung in the air all

day was answered.The matter was settled.

“We’re stuck,” Ramona told Beezus.“Now

we can stop being so good.”

The sisters went into the kitchen, shut

the door, and opened the refrigerator.

“A package of chicken thighs,” said Beezus with a groan.“And a package of frozen peas.

And yoghurt, one carton of plain and one

of banana. There must have been a special

on yoghurt.” She closed the refrigerator and reached for a cookbook.

“I could make place cards,” said Ramona,

as Beezus frantically flipped pages.

“We can’t eat place cards,” said Beezus.

“Besides, corn bread is your job because you brought it up.” Both girls spoke in whispers.

There was no need to let their parents, their 84

mean old parents, know what was going on in the kitchen.

In her mother’s recipe file, Ramona

found the card for corn bread written in Mr.

Quimby’s grandmother’s shaky handwrit-

ing, which Ramona found difficult to read.

“I can’t find a recipe for chicken thighs,”

said Beezus,“just whole chicken. All I know is that Mother bakes thighs in the flat glass dish with some kind of sauce.”

“Mushroom soup mixed with something

and with some kind of little specks stirred in.” Ramona remembered that much from

watching her mother.

Beezus opened the cupboard of canned

goods.“But there isn’t any mushroom soup,”

she said. “What are we going to do?”

“Mix up something wet,” suggested

Ramona. “It would serve them right if it

tasted awful.”

“Why don’t we make something awful?”

85

asked Beezus. “So they will know how we feel when we have to eat tongue.”

“What tastes really awful?” Ramona was

eager to go along with the suggestion, united with her sister against their enemy—for the moment, their parents.

Beezus, always practical, changed her mind.

“It wouldn’t work.We have to eat it too, and they’re so mean we’ll probably have to do

the dishes besides.Anyway, I guess you might say our honor is at stake, because they think we can’t cook a good meal.”

Ramona was ready with another solution.

“Throw everything in one dish.”

Beezus opened the package of chicken

thighs and stared at them with distaste.“I can’t stand touching raw meat,” she said, as she picked up a thigh between two forks.

“Do we have to eat the skin?” asked

Ramona. “All those yucky little bumps.”

Beezus found a pair of kitchen tongs. She 86

tried holding down a thigh with a fork and pulling off the skin with the tongs.

“Here, let me hold it,” said Ramona,

who was not squeamish about touching such

things as worms or raw meat. She took a firm hold on the thigh while Beezus grasped the skin with the tongs. Both pulled, and the skin peeled away. They played tug-of-war with

each thigh, leaving a sad-looking heap of skins on the counter and a layer of chicken thighs in the glass dish.