Drizzle by Kathleen Van Cleve Read Free Book Online

sharply. “What kind of a grown-up are you going to be if you just go around blabbing secrets all over the place?”
    “Secrets?”
    “If Edith wanted to show you and only you the library, I’m sure she had her reasons.”
    “She did. She said things were going to change and she wants me to be prepared.”
    Beatrice looks me up and down. “Now why’d you go and tell me that?” She holds up her hand, waving the dust rag in my face.
    “Do you know what she means?”
    “No,” Beatrice says quickly. “I’m not a mind-reader, Polly.” She seems to scrub the top of the fireplace mantel with her dust rag. “And neither are you.” She stops dusting. “Everything changes. Every single second on a farm brings something new.”
    “Is that what she meant?”
    Her face scrunches up.
    “I don’t ask a lot of questions. I just hope that when I need to do something, I do it. You never know what kind of person you’ll be until that moment of crisis: the kind who sits and watches, or the one who moves. I want to be the one who moves.”
    She puts her hands on her hip, thinking.
    “Okay, but—”
    “Go read your book, Polly.”
    “Beatrice—”
    She turns one last time to face me. “And for God’s sake, don’t talk about killing any bugs with baseball bats!”
    I stare at her, but it’s clear she’s finished with the conversation. A long time ago, Beatrice made us all sign a contract swearing that we wouldn’t kill any bugs on the farm on purpose, even if it had stung us or hurt us or anything. “Your dinner or your signature,” she insisted. Anyway, if she’d just let me speak, I could tell her that I wasn’t planning on killing any bugs. I was just trying to tell her how big and strange these bugs were.
    But Beatrice is long gone. I clutch my book and trudge up the stairs to my room. At moments like this, I think I really do have the weirdest family—and live on the weirdest farm—in the whole wide world.

SAME DAY, FRIDAY, AUGUST 22
     
    Jennifer Jong
     
    I flop onto my bed, arms behind my head, and then glance absently at the bright blue folder sitting on my desk. Mom has left me a bunch of orientation materials about St. Xavier’s, the new school I’m starting in precisely eleven days.
    I suddenly understand. I know exactly what Aunt Edith was talking about. She was telling me to be prepared for my new school. Seventh grade.
    Of course!
    I pick up the folder and stare at the bright picture of the beautiful stone building in the center of St. Xavier’s campus. Pictures of kids with big smiles and straight hair stare back at me. They look happy. Maybe I’ll be happy.
    I close my eyes and let myself imagine all the good things that can happen at St. Xavier’s.
    I have friends. I talk in class. No one thinks I’m weird. I’m one of those normal kids, the ones with their picture on the cover. I’ll even comb my hair.
    At my old school, nobody paid me much attention until this one terrible, awful day when a big, smiling kid from my class named Max Keyser noticed my finger.
    My right index finger is crooked. Not just kind of crooked, really crooked. It literally makes a right angle at the top knuckle, like a road sign announcing a turn. It’s genetic. Aunt Edith has one and so did Grandmom; perfect Patricia—of course—doesn’t. Usually I hide it, but on that day, I was looking through my backpack for a book to read so I didn’t look too stupid alone on the playground. I dropped the whole bag and some papers flew out. Max picked some up for me, but when he brought them over he glanced at my hand.
    “Hey, what’s that?” His eyes locked on my finger. I tried to curl it up, but I was too slow. “Eww!” he yelled, jumping back, dropping my papers.
    He made so much noise that a girl from my class—the most popular girl in my class—sauntered over. Her name was Jennifer Jong, but everyone called her Jongy. We were the two best spellers in our school.
    “Let me see,” Jongy said.
    I crouched