100 Days and 99 Nights by Alan Madison

I can be awful stubborn.
    A rocket ship countdown can be really exciting: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 — BLAST OFF!!! The engines burp fire and launch the astronauts into the blue sky, heading to the moon. My countdown isn’t as exciting. 1 week, 7 days, 168 hours, a mess of minutes, lots and lots of seconds (more “than you can shake a stick at”) — DAD’S HOME!!!
    It’s less like my head going into the clouds and more like having the ocean in my stomach. Some days the waves are so rough it makes me seasick. I feel like running into my bathroom, lying over the toilet, and throwing up. But I can’t. I hate that feeling when you want to puke but you can’t. Ugh.
    Martina’s mom was stuck in Mobile tending her sick grandmother for the weekend. This was bad for her mom and even worse for her grandma but great for Martina and me since she got to sleep over.
    Mom was making pasta for dinner and we were super hungry. Standing on chairs staring down at the pot of water on the stove, Martina and I watched, waiting for it to boil so we could drop in our handfuls of spaghetti.
    “A watched pot never boils,” Mom warned, then wandered away.
    “You think it knows we are watching?” asked Martina.
    “How could water know if it is being watched? That’s silly.”
    We peered in for a second more, then at the same time both of us inched backward on our chairs and ducked down below the pot’s edge, out of sight of the water.
    “Whatcha doing?” asked Ike when he entered.
    “Shhhhh,” we showered down on him. His ears turned Ike-red and he moved double time to find Mom. After a few moments we inched up, and sure enough, big bubbles were shooting off the bottom.
    “It’s boiling!” I squealed.
    “Mrs. McCarther! It’s boiling!” Martina reeled.
    “Penny,” my mom corrected, and helped direct the paths of our hard pasta into the pot’s erupting center.
    “Hmm, I guess a watched pot does boil.”
    Martina and I nodded and smiled but did not offer anything to make her think different. Sometimes it is better for parents not to know they are almost always right.
    After dinner we all got into our pj’s, cuddled up on the couch in the den under a huge Grandma Swishback quilt, made loads of popcorn, and watched an ancient not-color movie about a woman who really, really likes a ghost and also really, really likes a real live man. Partway in Ike got bored and grumped up the stairs, mumbling, “Dumb movie.” I was happy about him leaving because it made the movie better and left us more popcorn.
    For sleepovers, Dad would carry the mattress from the downstairs guest bedroom and set it on the floor next to my bed. I always thought this task must have been awfully easy because with little fuss the mattress always appeared, sheets hospital-cornered, pillows plumped, ready for my friend to be tucked in. I was wrong. It was way easier for Dad to do than to actually be done.
    The three of us dragged the flopping mattress down the hall and lifted it onto the first step. With our backs bent, Martina and I gripped the top and Mom the bottom.
    “Pull,” Mom commanded, and we did.
    “Push!” we called down, and she did.
    It took about a hundred pulls and pushes, combined with several laughs, a bunch of giggles, and many more grunts to gradually, step by step, inch by inch, make it to the top of the stairs. Sweaty-wet, Mom flopped onto the mattress. We followed.
    “Your dad is going to pay when he gets home! This is entirely one hundred percent his job.”
    “Yeah, he’s going to totally pay,” I agreed.
    “Absolutely pay,” chimed Martina, not wanting to be left out.
    Pushing and pulling the mattress to its proper spot next to my bed, we listed every job we would have Dad do when he returned.
    Mom tucked the pink sheets under the corners and went to get the extra pillow.
    I handed Martina Karl the monkey from my bedzoo.
    “Want to borrow him for the night?”
    “Oh, Karl! How have you been getting along?” She put