3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows by Ann Brashares Read Free Book Online Page A

be drawn. “Yeah,” she said uncertainly. And Spanish and some Arabic, she could have added, but she didn’t want to make her family sound like complete freaks. “My parents and my older sister speak them, so I don’t really forget. In Ghana most people speak at least two or three languages. It’s nothing special.”
    Ama took a quick look at his face. She was pretty sure she did know where the line between special and boring was drawn, and she wondered why she was in such a hurry to put herself on the wrong side of it.
    “Are you here to stay?” he asked. “In the U.S., I mean. Or -will you go back?”
    “To Ghana? No, I don’t think so. My parents have spent their life savings getting us green cards, so I doubt it. Well, I mean, my brother didn’t need one. He was born here. He’s the American in the family. We all have traditional Ghanaian names and his name is Bob.” Ama snuck another look at him. She’d forgotten for a moment that she’d been talking to a boy.
    Noah seemed to get a kick out of Bob. He laughed. And suddenly she worried he was laughing at her. Her ankles wobbled.
    She realized he had to walk slowly on account of her. He appeared to be as graceful and quiet on his feet as a bobcat, and yet here he was plodding along beside her. He was probably sorry he’d ever stuck himself -within a hundred yards of her.
    “You can go ahead,” she said nervously, tripping. “If you want.” She tried to pat down her horrific hair.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I know I’m slow. You don’t have to walk -with me.”
    “I’m sort of going at my own pace,” he said. “I took a detour back there and I found a stream and a tiny -waterfall. As you can see, I’m not in a big hurry.”
    “All right,” she said warily.
    “But if you want to walk by yourself…,” he began.
    No! I want to walk with you! Please don’t go! But she didn’t say that. She said, “Whatever.”
    “No, Mrs. Rollins, I don’t mind at all,” Polly said as Mrs. Rollins hectically emptied her purse, looking for her car keys. “I don’t have to be home until dinner.”
    Mrs. Rollins almost always needed Polly to babysit at least twice as long as she originally proposed on the phone, and Polly almost always said yes.
    “Thanks, Polly.” Mrs. Rollins turned to Nicky, her six-year- old, who was playing a game on the kitchen computer. “Nicholas. Did you take my keys?”
    Nicky shrugged innocently, though it was a fair question. The kids were frequently attracted to the remote-control aspect of the car keys, especially the red alarm button that made the car go berserk -with honking until someone shut it off.
    “Katherine!” Mrs. Rollins bellowed up the stairs. “Did you take my car keys?”
    Katherine took a minute or two to surface at the top of the stairs. “Huh?”
    “Have you seen my keys?”
    “No!”
    Polly quietly surveyed the kitchen. The main challenge of babysitting for Mrs. Rollins was not Nicky or Katherine but Mrs. Rollins herself. She was always losing her keys or her credit card, always running late, and though she was quite nice and often funny, she talked a lot more and a lot more loudly than anyone in Polly’s house.
    “Are these them?” Polly asked as she spotted them next to the phone and held them up.
    “Yes!” Mrs. Rollins grabbed them out of Polly’s fingers and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Oh, my goodness! Polly, what would I do without you?”
    Polly smiled. Unlike some grown-ups, Mrs. Rollins had problems Polly found easy to solve.
    After Mrs. Rollins left, Katherine materialized from the TV room and Nicky abandoned the computer. They sat on the soft-carpeted floor in the big center hallway, as they often did, and played games. They played cards and Tumblin’ Monkeys and the game where the alligator snapped your finger if you pushed on the wrong tooth. Polly always lost that game on purpose and hammed up the pain of the injury -which sent Katherine, who was five, into happy