Bruno for Real (5 page)

They were still laughing about the school of geese the next morning. Mom had noticed ants on the picnic table carrying her toast crumbs away. “Bruno,” she said. “Here's a school of ants. What are they learning?”

Bruno watched them for a few minutes. Most of the crumbs were bigger than the ants. “Weight lifting,” he said.

Bruno loved being at the cabin. There were so many different kinds of animals. There were birds, fish, snakes, seals, starfish, deer. Some of these animals didn't go to school. They had already learned to be snakes and deer. Others still needed lessons. Like the dragonflies. One day, they had a picnic on the beach. Mom said, “Look!” Dragonflies filled the air. They had green bodies and papery wings that whirred.

Just then a helicopter flew over. “There's the teacher,” Bruno said.

The starfish were learning how to hug underwater. When the tide went out, Bruno climbed on the
rocks to count them. They were purple and pink and uncountable. But they could hug. He couldn't pull them apart no matter how hard he tugged.

The seals were learning clapping songs in the bay. They swam in as the sun went down and had their lessons there. In his sleeping bag at night, Bruno could hear their flippers slapping the water.

His friend Ravi arrived with his family. They rented the cabin next door for two weeks. Ravi and Bruno fished and played hide-and-seek. They swam all day.

Bruno spent almost the whole summer at the cabin, but it wasn't long enough. “I don't want to go home,” he said.

“We have to go back to work,” Mom told him. “And you have to go back to school.”

“We need to buy your school supplies,” Dad said. “That should be fun.”

It was true. Bruno liked to go to the store at the end of the summer and pick out new pencil crayons.
New pencil crayons meant more shavings for his collection. “Can I get new pencil crayons even if I don't go back to school?” Bruno asked.

“If you don't go back to school?” Mom asked. “What are you talking about?”

That summer Bruno had caught three fish. He'd learned to zip up a sleeping bag with a six-mile zipper. He and Ravi had built a fort. One night they were allowed to sleep in it. Bruno could make a fire all by himself. He wasn't allowed to, but he could.

Bruno didn't think he needed to go back to school. He had already learned all he needed to be a boy.

In
Bruno for Real
, the sequel to
I, Bruno
, award-winning author Caroline Adderson shares more of Bruno's really real adventures. Caroline lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her husband and the son who lied to her when he said he'd always be seven.