Sneak Peek - Completely Clementine CHAPTER ONE As soon as I woke up Monday morning, I flopped onto the floor with my drawing pad. I drew a cow with a sagging down mouth and rivers of tears from her eyes. When I was finished, that cow looked so sad, my own eyes started to cry a little bit. I wiped them so I could admire what a great job I'd done, and then I smiled. Because oh, yes - this drawing was going to crack my father's heart all right. I drew about a hundred more teardrops splashing down, and added a couple of ducks paddling around in the puddle of cow-sadness. Then I got dressed and went out into the kitchen, where everyone else was already at the table. "Okra, would you please pass this to our father?" I asked, sitting down. My brother, who is obsessed with dinosaurs these days, took the drawing in his teeth and handed it over. "Hmmm..." my dad said. "That is not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all. A cow with hoses-eyes. That could come in handy for...well, for putting out fires in a dairy barn, I suppose." I grabbed the drawing back and stomped into my room to label it: THE CRYING COW. Then I crossed out CRYING and changed it to WEEPING. This is because weeping is a lot sadder than crying; it's tragical, really. I like to use exactly the right word for things. Then I stomped back and handed it to my brother again. "Collard Greens, please pass this to our father," I growled into my orange juice. This time, my dad didn't even look at the drawing. "Clementine, try to understand," he said. "It was very nice of Mrs. Jacobi to bake that meatloaf for us. She knows how tired your mom is these days, with the baby due so soon. She wanted to help out. It would have been rude not to eat it." I zipped my mouth into a hard ruler line so it wouldn't say, "What about that cow in that meatloaf? Don't you think you were rude to her?" because an important part of not speaking to someone is not speaking to them.