I could have sworn he said he was going to be twelve soon, just like me, but that we'd be going to junior high. That was impossible. As well as I could remember, I had just finished fifth grade, and next was sixth. Sixth-graders don't go to junior high.

I was _____ .

The typical monster truck racing event has from 8 to 16 trucks competing. First is a qualifying round. Each truck runs the course to record a qualifying time. These times are used to decide which trucks run against each other in the first round of racing.

The trucks have _____ .

Liz, for one, was convinced rats had killed them. Mr. Bowyer didn't argue, but it was plain he didn't agree. Mrs. Bowyer, frankly, wasn't very interested. She had enough to do, she said, looking after the business of the farm, and her own family, without worrying about the family of a stable-cat. She'd had to phone Iceland again about those blasted sheep.

Mrs. Bowyer's _____ was elsewhere.

Just short of the boulder, Randy stumbled. I tried to hold him, but lost my grip on the belt. He toppled backward with a splash and came to the surface paddling like crazy. I managed to make it the last few feet to the boulder and braced my back against it. Randy got into the eddy below it, staggered to his feet, and managed to stumble within reach. I grabbed his hand and pulled him the rest of the way.

Randy had _____ .

Some of these footprints are like snapshots. They catch dinosaurs in action, millions of years ago. Tracks in Australia, for example, tell of a stampede. A herd of plant-eaters had been milling around together. Suddenly they all turned in one direction and ran. Another set of footprints tells why. They are the tracks of a meat-eating dinosaur, and they appear on top of the tracks made by the fleeing herd.

The herd was _____ .

Jerry opened his locker. He had thumbtacked a poster to the back wall of the locker on the first day of school. The poster showed a wide expanse of beach, a sweep of sky with a lone star glittering far away. A man walked on the beach, a small solitary figure in all that immensity. At the bottom of the poster, these words appeared—Do I dare disturb the universe? By Eliot, who wrote the Waste Land thing they were studying in English. Jerry wasn't sure of the poster's meaning. But it had moved him mysteriously. It was traditional at Trinity for everyone to decorate the interior of his locker with a poster. Jerry chose this one.

The poster was _____ .

When a soldier tries to serve a cold drink to Sachi, she shakes her head nervously. Another soldier offers her a wet towel to cool herself off. Again she refuses.

She is _____ .

Celinda doesn't need to be told twice. She jumps out of bed, washes her face, and puts on her clothes. At the foot of her bed is a suitcase. To make sure she wouldn't leave her special clothes and jewelry behind, Celinda packed everything last night.

She is _____ to travel.

There was nobody at the landing place or the little house that stood in a garden beside it. Beyond the house was the forest. Adam looked at the narrow clay path that led straight into the thick wood of tall oaks and beech trees. Jankin must have gone that way.

There were no other _____ .

Once upon a time in Spain there was a little bull and his name was Ferdinand. All the other little bulls he lived with would run and jump and butt their heads together, but not Ferdinand. He liked to sit just quietly and smell the flowers. He had a favorite spot out in the pasture under a cork tree. It was his favorite tree and he would sit in its shade all day and smell the flowers. Sometimes his mother, who was a cow, would worry about him. She was afraid he would be lonesome all by himself.

His behavior was _____ .

"The interior, of course is not 19th century. It is, after all, an art museum. I designed the interior to display the art the best way possible," Mr. Jarse continued. "We kept the high ceilings, as you can see, and put beautiful chandeliers at the center of each ceiling in the main display rooms."

Mr. Jarse _____ his design.

Fletcher says she needs to see a doctor. He says babies are supposed to have all sorts of shots which she never had. But a grownup is supposed to take a baby to the doctor, not a sister or brother.

Fletcher is _____ .

As she recalled the early events of the morning, Missie again felt a tingle go through her. She and Willie were really heading west! After all of the planning and dreaming, they were actually on the way. It still seemed a dream, yet Missie's weary, aching body verified that it was fact.

They were on their _____ .

Some developmental tasks are achieved as the body physically matures. These tasks are usually achieved in a certain order. For instance, children will learn to sit, crawl, walk, and run in that order.

Children develop in _____ .

At first, she thought she was mistaken. How could that passenger be sitting in the first-class dining salon? But as she continued to look, she knew there was no mistaking those finely chiseled cheekbones. He was still in need of a haircut, and although he had changed into a dinner jacket, he was wearing it over a white turtleneck sweater, the only man in the entire room dressed so informally. He probably didn't know any better.

The man was _____ .

Jessi and Mal arrived that afternoon just as I was about to call the meeting to order. I always watch Claudia's digital clock closely, and the second it clicks to five-thirty, I start the meeting, whether everybody's there or not. That day, just as Jessi and Mal were settling into their usual spot on the floor, the clock clicked. "Order!" I said.

I like to be _____ .

: When Cuthbert's mom turned around, her mouth sort of hung open as if it had come unhinged from her jaw. The package was about the size of a shirt box. She shook it. She shook it again, this time closer to her ear, then looked at it with her lips pursed to the side and her head cocked. "Very strange," he heard her say.

Cuthbert's mom was _____ .

There were little pies for supper too. Esther did not eat hers but laid it in her lap when nobody was looking. Tomorrow there would be another one in her lunch and she and Dan could eat them together.

She wanted to _____ the pies.

Benjamin also read a book on how to argue. The author said that a person should not flatly contradict another person. Instead he should be polite and ask questions until at last he had brought his opponent around to contradicting himself. Benjamin tried this and found that it worked.

Benjamin followed the _____ .