Plot Week 1: The Escalator -- peer review, please

Scotty whistled and scuffed bare toes along the dusty path to the creek. “It was a good trick,” he thought, “telling Mom I had to go to school early for detention so I don’t have tattle-tale Jenny hanging on me. I’m smarter than Jenny anyway because I hid my fishing rod and shovel Saturday.” He’d tied his shoelaces together and wore his shoes draped around his neck and his admiral’s cap shoved back on his carrot-top head. He had his school lunch and he’d put his milk bottle in the cold water.

There was a flicker on the path in front of him: a tiger, for sure!  He froze, then eased behind a tree.  “I have to trap it and get it in a cage.  If I don’t it will smell all the fish I’m going to catch and eat them!”  Then, a memory from Mom reading “The Jungle Book” at bedtime.  “Or me!”  

He pretended he was Mowgli. He scootched low to put down his lunch and shoes. Then he exploded into a high leap onto the tiger’s back! He rammed his cap over its face. He ran rings around Shere Khan with a fat rope til that tiger was trussed so tight he’d never move! “Come, Grey Brother! We have caught the terrible tiger!” he crowed.

The raspberry bush he’d captured had snagged his shirt and his filthy feet. He’d better catch a lot of fish now, because Mom was going to be mad about that ripped shirt now, not just about playing hooky.