Twell Town E-Book

Harriet M. Winter

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 120

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Bunny Thread is a peculiar girl. At least that is what her classmates think. She is eleven years old, makes her own clothes, and can handle a needle or a sewing machine faster than anyone else. Yet she doesn't seem to be destined for a best friend forever. Not until she comes up with the idea of making one by herself. One afternoon, a teddy bear is born, by the name of Buttercup. Bunny takes him into her heart right away. But what happens when Buttercup begins to speak to her, claiming he wants to show her his home. The bear whisks Bunny off to Twell Town, and an adventure, more peculiar than Bunny herself, begins to unfold.

Leseprobe

Twell Town

Author's Note1 Nice to Meet You, Bunny Thread!2 Introducing: the New Friend3 Early Surprise4 Twell Town5 Dexter's Den6 Hoodlum Surveillance7 Professor Sniff8 Mayor Trilby9 Dexter Gets Cornered10 Long Way Home11 Where Is the Ball of Ruby Yarn?12 Trouble for Bunny13 The Town Treasury14 Foiled Plan15 Three Cheers for Dexter!16 Important WarningCopyright

Author's Note

Dear Reader, The story you are about to read is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

1 Nice to Meet You, Bunny Thread!

Once upon a time there was a girl called Bunny Thread. She had lived her young life, eleven years to be exact, together with her Mom, Mrs. Thread, at the back of a modest button shop on Maple Road number two and a half. The half was on account of the town’s old surveyor, Mr. Tiddly — close to 90 years of age, wearing a pair of Coke-bottle glasses, and enjoying a regular gulp of an aged brandy before bedtime. The town’s mayor hadn’t had the heart to retire the old geezer, who so enjoyed his job as the measurer of streets, backyards, and neighborhoods. Thanks to Mr. Tiddly’s slightly off the mark measuring, every house on Maple Road had a half; Mrs. Medler lived at one and a half, Mr. Laggard and his bone lazy family had a house at number four and a half, and Miss Stickling, an accountant by profession, lived at five and a half. 

Mrs. Thread was a hard-working sort of woman. Her husband, Mr. Thread, had sadly passed on many years ago before Bunny had even been born. Bunny had watched her mother at work ever since she was a toddler. As soon as she could hold a needle the right way, she had begun to practice sewing, knitting, crocheting.

“I’ve never seen her idle about with silly things like WhatsUpp and whatnot,” her mother would say. “No, she’s always sat with her nose to a sewing machine or her hand to a needle. Why, I cannot recall a time she has done anything else! If you’d need buttons sewn on your power suit or a zipper placed onto your bathing costume, then I’ll tell you right now, you’ll find nobody quicker and more nimble-fingered than my Bunny, you won’t.”

In fact, there was practically no needle Bunny couldn’t operate or a piece of clothing she wasn’t able to put together.

“And don’t get me started on her room, mind you,” Mrs. Thread would warn others, “fabrics hanging from the ceiling, drawers dripping with buttons, buttons and more buttons! You’ll find no picture of Lady Gohgah or some other teen idol on her walls. No, you’ll see knitting patterns, dress patterns, instructions on how to make skirts, and scarves and other things. My goodness, the child is a pattern-brain! But, I suppose I had it coming, with owning a button shop and all. Still, she’s a harmless, sweet little thing, my Bunny.”

Sweet thing indeed, though her schoolmates had a different description for her. Amber Glib, for example, who was the most popular pupil in Bunny’s class and the daughter of the town’s dermatologist, Mr. Glib.

“A mess, that’s what she is,” Amber would note, chewing her Juicy Fruit. “I mean, where’s the crop top? The shorts? I don’t see no scrunchie on her pathetic twig of a wrist. There’s no fox on her school bag either, is there? Really, come on, the girl MAKES her own clothes! How twisted is that?”

Twisted or not, it was all very true. Day in, day out, Bunny would come to school wearing her own unique creations; colorful, imaginative things with buttons, ribbons, and zippers in places you would not expect to find any. Her shoes had mismatch laces, her outfit was like an onion — layers upon layers of fabrics. Every day after school she would be relieved to toss her books and other school trappings aside and trot down the stairs to her secret girl cave at the back of her mother’s shop. Soon the sounds of hemming and humming would echo upward, all the way up to her mother’s keen ears, sitting at the shop, arranging her shelves.

“Bunny’s back,” she would think. And then she would yell down the hall — if there were no customers presently present in her shop. “Honey, did you eat at school? There’s a snack in the kitchen for you!”

But Bunny had no time for kitchens or snacks, she needed to finish her latest creation: a coat with purple sleeves and a frilly front thing. It would be perfect for the coming fall. Bunny was actually quite happy with her life. Happy, except for occasional twinges in the late evenings when it was bedtime. Before turning in, she would talk to her Dad, whose picture stood at her nightstand in a pink fabric frame with little hearts.

“Oh, Dad,” she would begin. “I wish a had a friend to be silly with, sometimes.” But she could not think of any one pupil in her class that would fill that description. “I know there’s Amber Glib, but she’s all about surfaces, she won’t do. Daffy Petty would be another choice, but she follows Amber around like a ribbon-faced Yorkshire terrier,” she would narrate.

Then she would lean over to her Dad's picture and put her cheek against his, sighing, “I suppose there’s also Betsy Darling, but she cannot get her google-eyes off her YouTube, what with her addiction to K-pop.” The more Bunny thought of potential BFFs in her class, the less she found.

Mr. Thread’s friendly face with a friendly smile and an even friendlier mustache would stare back at his daughter. But then, quite out of the blue, on one such evening, Bunny's face lit up with excitement, and she piped up, “You’re right Dad!”  “I should use my talent to make myself a friend — a true best friend!”

2 Introducing: the New Friend

The next day, right after school, Bunny hurried to her room to start her new project.

The First Try:

She scoured the third drawer on the left side of her old dresser. Fingering through a stack of felt textiles in all the colors you could imagine, she finally pulled out a bright pink piece. She then went to her work desk and produced a pair of large scissors from another drawer. On the other side of the desk, she kept a drawer full of eyes, and another one full of noses. Before you wonder, no, she wasn’t a witch or a mass murderer, but a true artisan with a versatile stock of material for EVERYTHING!

She chose a pair of big, green eyes and a cute, little nose. After creating the right shape, she cut out the felt carefully: two pieces each, back and front. Then it was time to sew, sew, and sew some more! And that she did. She sat down at her Singer, the kind that you operate by a large, iron pedal, and began her work.

Whirr, whirr, whirr, her Singer sang. The quicker she stepped on the pedal, the quicker it spun. In no time at all, the two pieces of the pink felt fabric had melted together. Now her little friend needed some stuffing. She pulled out yet another drawer and grabbed a bag of cotton wool. She stuffed her creation with half a bag and closed the stuffing hole swiftly. Next, she moved from her sewing machine to a needle and thread. She created her friend eyelids and placed the eyes inside them. She reached for a tube of superglue and gave him a nose.

Looking at her work, she decided that something was missing: a lively mouth. She went to her cupboard, took out a tiny box, and emptied it into her hand. There lay a dozen baby teeth she had collected over the years. One by one, she glued the teeth into her friend’s mouth. “There,” she said, “my new friend is ready!” She put the creature, sort of resembling a bear, onto her window sill to have a better look. In the sunlight her new friend looked......AWFUL. His gaze was bug-eyed, and he had a permanent grin creepy enough to make the magpies sitting in the oak tree outside fidget.

Why, in fact, in the right angle, the bear looked like Bunny’s late Great-Aunt Ruth, with her bone-chilling grimace full of false teeth. “No sweets for wicked children,” she would always say, “just a good old twig for the fanny.” Bunny shuddered thinking of her. “No, no, no. This won’t do!” she concluded.

The Second Try:

Bunny rummaged through a drawer full of underthings. She pulled out a pair of old pantyhose from a time she had still been small enough to fit into them. They were relatively hole-free, stretchy, and thick enough for her purposes. A pair of grey tights with black stripes, yes, they would do nicely.

She cut the leg parts into two pieces. Then she tied the ends of the remaining fabric into a knot. Now, it was time to do some needling. Perched on the floor, she sewed the cut off parts onto the sides of the pantyhose. Presto! Her new friend had arms. Now all he needed were a pair of eyes and a red mouth. Felt fabrics would be the perfect solution; Bunny cut out two white circles for the eyes and a big red circle for the mouth. After sewing her friend’s face on, the work was done. Bunny put her new friend on the window sill again, so she could evaluate her work.

The new friend sat leaning against the window looking....positively flabbergasted! One eye was as big as a plate while the other resembled a freshly laid egg. His mouth gaped open like a mousetrap, and his arms hung off the window sill. Poor thing looked like he had just run the marathon! “Oh my word!” Bunny gasped, shaking her head. “I can’t ask him to be my best friend — he’s already exhausted at the idea! Frazzled, knackered, absolutely pooped!” Bunny took the pantyhose puppet off the sill and put him into the storage bin under her bed. “Sleep tight, my weary friend, get some rest,” she instructed him, closing the bin.

The Third Try:

Now Bunny was more determined than ever to succeed in her quest for a best friend forever. She grabbed a wicker basket from the corner of her room, full or yarn; oodles and oodles of yarn. There was red, green, yellow, blue, all colors of furry string, waiting to be knitted into a sweater, socks, a pair of mittens, perhaps. She chose a soft ball of cream-colored yarn and took out her knitting needles.

And what a sight it was, Bunny Thread, knitting. She left no loop loose or stitch too snug. Her hands became a knitting machine, so swiftly she began producing a fabric — pulling the needle through the loop, lifting the yarn over, and again, and again. Watching her work was mesmerizing, to say the least.

In no time at all, would you believe it, she had made a soft patch of fabric big enough to mold into a new companion. “All right my friend, now you need a round belly and a soft face,” she said.

She emptied the rest of the cotton from the bag; half of it went to her friend’s head, the other half formed a nice, round tummy. She resumed her knitting and stitched the head to the creature’s body, finally closing the lower stuffing hole, right under the bum. She took out, once more, her needle and thread, red this time, and gave her friend paws and a little nose. His belly button received a red X. “Just one more thing!” she piped up, sorting out her buttons drawer. “This is the right one,” she educated her soon-to-be best friend, “and this is the left one,” she concluded, holding out two big, red buttons. Of course, the lesson was wasted on her friend, as he had no eyes yet.

Bunny sewed both buttons onto the creature’s face; the red button with white stripes on the right side and the red button with white dots on the left side. She rushed her ready friend, definitely a teddy bear, onto the window sill again. “Ta-dah!” she rejoiced. “Now I’ve got a friend.”

When it was bedtime, Bunny took her new bear friend next to her, letting him share her pillow. “I’m going to call you Buttercup. Yes, Buttercup is a cute name,” she said, and fell happily asleep.

3 Early Surprise

When the first rays of sunlight beamed onto Bunny’s face, she crinkled her sleepy nose and squinted her eyes. Turning her head to the side, she realized that Buttercup’s furry ears were missing from her pillow.

“Buttercup?” she uttered. She sat up and rubbed her eyes to be able to see better. There was no bear on her bed. There was no bear on the floor. And there was definitely no bear under her bed, either. “Odd, very odd,” she murmured. But then she had the idea to look toward the window. By George, there he was, her new friend, Buttercup the Bear, sitting quietly, watching through the glass.

“There you are, my friend. Mom must have placed you on the sill while I slept,” she reasoned, clever as she was. Bunny got up to fetch her bear, when all of a sudden...it turned his little head toward her! EEHH! CRASH! And THUMP! Bunny let out a scream, crashed to the floor, her little bum making a thump.

“You all right, kid?” the bear spoke. Eyes as big as pancakes, mouth wide open like a tunnel, Bunny stared at her toy bear, who had just spoken to her. “What..what..I mean, huh?” Yes, that was all she could utter. Then a deep gasp, and, “Buttercup, you’re alive!” “Buttercup?” the bear said, letting out a hardy laugh. “Kid, do I look like a Buttercup?”

He pulled his belly upward until it bounced back down again. “You can call me Dexter,” he said. “Dexter? That’s not a cute name!” Bunny protested. “Well, that’s my name, like it or not,” the bear concluded.

He craned his neck left and right, saying, “Kid, I gotta go. Important business.” “Go where?” Bunny asked. “To my neck of the woods,” he answered. “As in...where?” she pestered. “Look, I have to go back to my home town. I’ve got important things to take care of,” the bear explained. “Your home town?” she pressed on. “You’d better watch out, kid, before you turn into a parrot. Nobody likes an annoying bird full of questions,” Dexter enlightened her. “But, I don’t understand. If this isn’t your home, what is?” she insisted to know. “Twell Town, kid, the best place in the world,” Dexter continued. “Never heard of it!” she piped up.

Bunny slumped back onto her bed, concluding, “Jeez, I must still be asleep. This has got to be the craziest dream ever! Come on, Bunny, wake up already!”