A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online Page A

sick.
    "Are you sure?" asked my mother. "We may be gone for quite a while. Do you want me to call Will and ask him to come up and stay with you?"
    I shook my head again and my voice got a little better. "I'll be okay," I told her.
    I could tell she wasn't sure, but my father was already in the car waiting for her. "Really, Mom, I'll be fine. Go on; I'll stay here."
    She hugged me. "Meg, try not to worry. She'll be okay."
    I nodded and walked with her to the stairs, and
then she went down, and they were gone. I could hear the car driving very fast away from the house.

    The only light on in the house was in my room, mine and Molly's, and I couldn't go back there. I walked to the doorway without looking inside, reached in and turned off the switch so that the whole house was dark. But the beginning of morning was coming; outside there was a very faint light in the sky. I took a blanket from my parents' bed, wrapped it around me, and went into my father's study, the little room that I had wanted to be mine. I curled up in his big comfortable chair, tucked the blue blanket around my bare feet, looked out the window, and began to cry.
    If I hadn't fought with Molly this afternoon, none of this would have happened, I thought miserably, and knew that it wasn't true. If I had just said "I'm sorry" before we went to bed, it wouldn't have happened, I thought, and knew that that wasn't true, either. If we hadn't come here to live. If I'd kept my side of the room neater.
    None of that makes any sense, I told myself.
    The fields were slowly beginning to turn pink as the first streaks of sun came from behind the hills and colored the snow. It startled me that morning was coming; it seemed too soon. For the first time since I had heard Molly's frightened voice in our dark bedroom, I remembered the light in the old
house. Had I really seen it? Now everything seemed unreal, as if it had all been a nightmare. On the far side of the pink fields the gray house was very dark against the gradually lightening sky, and its windows were silent and black, like the eyes of guardians.

    But I knew that back in the blue-flowered bedroom the blood was still there, that it had not been a dream. I was alone in the house; my parents were gone, with Molly, with Molly's hair sticky from blood, and the stain spreading on the blanket around her. Those moments when I had stood shaking and terrified, with my eyes tightly closed against the corner of the wall, moments which may have been hours—I couldn't tell anymore—had really happened. I had seen the light in the window across the fields, as well. I remembered standing and watching its reflection on the snow, and I knew it was real, too, though it didn't seem important anymore. I closed my eyes and fell asleep in my father's chair.

5.

    I made two Easter eggs, one for Will and one for Molly. Not just plain old hard-boiled eggs that you dye with those vinegar-smelling colors that never come out looking the way you hoped they would. Molly and I used to do that when we were little—dozens of them, and then we wouldn't eat them, and they turned rotten.
    No, these were special, and there were only two of them. I blew the insides out of two white eggs, so that only the shells were left, very fragile and light.
Then I spent hours in my room, painting them.

    Molly's was yellow, partly I guess because it reminded me of her blond hair, and partly because my parents told me that her hospital room was depressingly gray-colored, and I thought that yellow would cheer it up a bit. Then, over the pale yellow egg, I used my tiniest brush and painted narrow, curving lines in gold, and between the lines, miniature blue flowers with gold and white centers. It took a long time, because the eggshell was so delicate and the painting so small and intricate; but it was worth it: when it was finished, the egg was truly beautiful. I varnished it to make it shiny and permanent, and when it was dry, I packed it in cotton in