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

hysterics.
    Most teenage babysitters liked to park the kids in front of the TV or the game system and spend the hours talking on their cell phones and texting their friends, but Polly didn’t do that. Polly took pride in the fact that Nicky and Katherine almost never -watched TV -when she -was there. They almost never complained or -whined. Polly suspected it -was because she genuinely liked sitting on the floor, playing -with them. She liked their games. She liked drawing pictures at the kitchen table -with them. She liked eating chicken nuggets and pudding -with them. And not just because she -was a good babysitter either. It -was -what she felt like doing -when she -was there.
    She -was serving up the nuggets and mini-carrots -when she heard the doorbell. She put down the plates and -went to get it.
    She opened the door to a tall, very good-looking guy of about twenty. She’d met him at this house before.
    “Hey,” he said. “Polly, right?”
    Polly nodded. She -was so amazed and happy that he remembered her name, she -was too stunned for a moment to move out of his -way and let him in.
    At the sound of his voice, the two kids came barreling toward the front door.
    “Brian!” they screamed. As he walked in, they both jumped on him at the same time.
    He laughed and pretended to lurch and stagger around the front hall.
    She watched him pretend-roughhouse with the kids and then effortlessly toss them onto the puffy living room couch one at a time. They were wild with happiness. Brian was their favorite person in the world, she knew.
    “Do you want to share our chicken nuggets?” Katherine asked, pulling him by the hand into the kitchen.
    “Of course,” Brian said.
    Nicky leapt onto Brian’s back for the walk to the table. Polly passed out more nuggets so there would be enough for everybody.
    “I came by to pick up a couple of DVDs for Tibby,” he explained, sitting on the table and taking the food Katherine offered. “I told her I’d send them.”
    Polly nodded. She poured glasses of milk all around.
    Tibby was the twenty-year- old sister of Nicky and Katherine, and more than that, she was part of the mythic Sisterhood. She was in college, living in New York City, and Polly had only met her twice. Tibby was a filmmaker, and Polly was so dazzled by her and her reputation that she hadn’t managed to say a word in her presence.
    Brian -was Tibby s boyfriend, though their relationship was complicated, Polly knew, by his living here and Tibby’s living in New York.
    For Polly, Brian set the gold standard for boyfriends. When Polly read books or magazine articles involving girls with boyfriends, she found she always pictured Brian.
    As much as they worshipped Brian, Nicky and Katherine groused about Tibby sometimes, but that didn’t make Polly think any less of her. She understood that kids were perhaps a bit less cute when they were related to you and lived in your house and you couldn’t leave them at the end of the day if you wanted to.
    When Brian -went upstairs, Nicky and Katherine followed, and Polly followed them. She took a hand of each of them and held it, knowing instinctively that Brian wouldn’t want them to follow him into Tibby’s bedroom.
    Brian turned the knob and swung the door open. Polly saw into the room -with its shades pulled down, a computer and piles and piles of discs on the desk.
    Polly was slightly in awe of this room. The door -was mostly kept closed, and though she’d seen into it a few times, she’d never gone in. It was like a shrine to an imagined life, mythical and ominous to Polly. It stood for growing up and leaving home and the artifacts and the people left behind.
    On the inside of Tibby’s door, Polly noticed, as she had once before, the large photograph of a pale blond girl. It was a close-up picture of the girl’s face. The girl-was laughing, but there was something haunting to Polly about it, she wasn’t sure why.
    Polly knew Brian -wanted to be alone. “Hey, you