A Shiloh Christmas by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Read Free Book Online Page A

already squealin’ about bein’ outside in their underpants. We shampoo our hair while we’re at it, but then the rain quits and I don’t know if I got all the soap out or not. Ma checks the rain barrel under the downspout, and it’s got only an inch of water in it. Still, there’s a quarter inch in the pots and pans, and we’ll save every little bit.

    At school on Monday, I’m not the only one looks scruffy. Easy to tell who has city water and which of us depends on a well, tryin’ hard to preserve it.
    In English class, we draw names to see who we’re going to write a biography about. I wish I could get David’s and he could get mine. We’d write some really crazy things about each other. I know the one name I don’t want to get, and when I reach in the box that Mr. Kelly passes round and pull out a slip of paper, that’s exactly the name I get: Rachel Dawes.
    I complain to David at lunchtime.
    â€œShe rides our bus and hasn’t said one single solitary word to me since school started,” I say.
    â€œYou ever said one single solitary word to her?” he asks.
    â€œNo, because I’ve never not once seen her smile.”
    â€œMaybe she’s got bad teeth,” says David.
    â€œYou even try to get near her here at school, she turns away.”
    â€œGo to her house, then!” David says. “Some people are a lot more friendly at home than they are at school. She probably just doesn’t want a boy talking to her.”
    If she didn’t want a boy talking to her at school, she probably don’t want him coming by at home neither. Still, it was an assignment. Someone had to do it.
    I put it off for a whole week. Adam Frisk drew my name, and he’s already started writing about me. What I really want to do is start work on a straw man to sit in that Frankenstein chair, get him all fixed up for Halloween. Finally I tell myself I can’t do that till I’ve interviewed Rachel and get enough for five hundred words. So on Friday after school, I look up the Dawes on our church address list and head out on my bike. I find the road where they live, make the turn, and start looking for their name on the mailboxes.
    Finally, around a bend, there it is—an old two-story farmhouse, appears to be—field on both sides of it, a stand of trees on the northwest border to shield it from wind in the winter. No porch, just a small stoop, and every blind in every window is pulled exactly halfway down. Bet I could measure with a yardstick, and they’d all be exactly the same.
    I been rehearsing what I’m going to say when she opens the door: Hi, Rachel. I drew your name in English class and . . . No. Never said one word to her up until now, so I got to start out with something more polite. Hi, Rachel. Sorry I didn’t get around to this before, but . . .
    No. That makes me look weak. Even saw her a couple times in church on Sunday and never said hi then, and neither did she.
    Nobody comes at my first knock. Maybe it wasn’t loud enough. So I bang real hard. And suddenly the door opens and there’s the preacher looking down at me, his glasses on the end of his nose. He’s got a pen in one hand, a sheet of paper in the other, and I can tell by his face he don’t remember me from church—haven’t been there enough, I guess.
    â€œYes?” he says.
    â€œIs . . . Rachel home?” I bleat out. Sound like a sheep.
    â€œWhy do you want to see her?” he says.
    â€œUh . . . I come to interview her for school,” I tell him.
    â€œWhy is that?” the preacher asks, and I can tell right off he don’t want any boys talking to his daughter.
    Why is what? I wonder, and I shrug. “To write about her for English,” I say, and then I see that Rachel don’t tell him much about school.
    â€œI’m afraid Rachel’s busy now. Excuse me,” the