All-Season Edie by Annabel Lyon Read Free Book Online Page A

one of everything: one church, one school, one haunted mansion, one movie-house, one street of stores, one zoo, one library, one museum. You can get anywhere you want by walking, and you know everybody, and you can go places all on your own, even if you’re only eleven. In Coquitlam there are three Safeways and a Save-On-Foods, five swimming pools, three skating rinks, ten schools and two shopping malls, but nobody walks anywhere. You don’t walk home from school; you get a ride in somebody’s car pool. You have to take the car to buy a Popsicle or mail a letter. In those storybook towns, in the fall there are apple trees with crispy leaves, and mysterious strangers arriving at dusk, and candlelight flickering in the windows of abandoned houses. In winter there’s snow and ice-skating and caroling and sleigh rides. In spring there are flowers, and in summer there are more flowers and swimming holes and homemade lemonade.
    In Coquitlam, it rains or it doesn’t. Those are the seasons. And even if it’s sunny, eleven-year-old girls absolutely do not play outside by themselves. That’s just how it is.
    I wait until after supper, when Mom has done the dishes, tidied up the living room, put on a load of laundry and sat down in front of the TV , to remind her about the library.
    â€œOh, Edie,” Mom says. “Maybe tomorrow.”
    I think I’m going to explode.
    â€œI’ll take you,” Dad offers.
    That’s just ridiculous. “You have never been to the library, and you don’t even know where it is,” I object.
    He frowns, like I’ve made a good point. “You can drive.”
    â€œThis is serious!”
    â€œIt is?” he says. “Okay. If we’re not back in a week, send a search party.”
    â€œBetter make it two weeks,” Mom says. “If it’s serious.”
    They’re laughing at me. Now, if I were a witch, what would I do with them? I would point my finger and—what?
    â€œWhat?” Dad says, because I’m standing still, staring at him, struck by a whole new idea.
    Going places with Dad is different from going places with Mom. He plays the radio in the car, for one thing, and he’s always trying to be funny. Sometimes I’m in the mood for this, but sometimes, like tonight, I have more important things on my mind.
    â€œWhat did the elephant say to the gas-station attendant?” he’s saying now.
    â€œYes,” I say, distracted. If Grandma is a witch, doesn’t that make me at least one-quarter witch? Or is it one-eighth? And even one-eighth ought to be enough for a spell or two, oughtn’t it? There was that Great Scientists book on the guy who grew sweet peas, Mendel, who figured out whether you would have blue eyes if your grandparents did, or something. Genetics that’s called. I’ll have to find that book too.
    â€œâ€˜Yes’?” Dad says. “The elephant said ‘yes’?”
    At the library, I ditch him immediately and go straight to the computer terminal to check the online catalogues. Then I hit the shelves, list in hand. It’s a great relief, finally, to be where the information is, getting some real work done.
    Fifteen minutes before closing, I stagger over to Dad with a stack of books that comes up to my chin. He’s sitting in the Mr. Grasshopper Reading Corner, reading a newspaper. “Help,” I say.
    â€œYou’re kidding,” he says. I drop a few books and he picks them up, glancing at their titles. “ Macbeth ?” he says. “ The Salem Witch Trials ?”
    â€œSchool project,” I say.
    â€œIs that a cookbook?”
    â€œIt’s a herb book,” I say warily.
    â€œCan you check my book out on your card too?”
    His book is a hardcover, about four inches thick, with no pictures. It’s called Disraeli . Almost all of my books have a green dot on the spine, meaning they’re for younger readers. His