Drizzle by Kathleen Van Cleve Read Free Book Online Page A

down on the ground, pressing my fingertips against the palm of my hand. We had been in the same class since first grade. Up until fifth grade, she ignored me. Then I beat her in our school’s spelling bee. She told everyone I had taken some kind of secret rhubarb potion, and that I was a cheater. The teacher had told her to stop, but Jongy just kept saying “You can’t make me, you can’t make me.”
    I didn’t take any potion. I just knew how to spell “broccoli.”
    Anyway, this was the first time she had spoken to me in a year.
    “It’s just my finger,” I told her. “It’s a little crooked.”
    “I’m sure it isn’t that bad,” she said sweetly. “Let me see.” I straightened up and extended my hand, palm up. She leaned forward and inspected it, like she was a scientist. She smiled, and I smiled back, relieved.
    Jongy turned my hand around so that my palm faced down. She still smiled, but now she closed her lips. She traced the curve with her own straight, manicured finger. Then, in a flash, she let go of my hand and turned to Max and the other thousand classmates I suddenly seemed to have.
    “I knew it,” Jongy said. She glanced over at me and then twirled back around to the crowd. “She’s a witch.” She said it as matter-of-factly as if she was saying the sky was blue.
    “What?” I said.
    Jongy’s mouth opened wide in a big, glaringly bright white smile. “There’s something weird on that farm. It rains every week! At the same time! Come on! We live in one of the driest states in the country. Daddy always says he doesn’t know why it isn’t being investigated.” She said “investigated” as if it had about twenty syllables. “I think the police are scared that they’ll end up burned at the stake or whatever it is witches do.”
    I stood there, wishing I really was a witch so that I could disappear. My whole body felt hot, embarrassment pouring into my blood, and I’m sure I turned as red as our most thriving rhubarb.
    “No!” I said. “No, I’m not—” But I looked around at all my classmates—they seemed to have tripled, quadrupled—and I stopped. “I’m—”
    Tears flooded my eyes. I tucked my head down and picked up my bag. I could feel myself start to cry and I really didn’t want Jongy to see that. Aunt Edith hates girls who cry. So I pushed by her and walked as fast as I could into the school, into the locker room, and hid in the bottom of the sports equipment closet. I didn’t leave for the rest of the day.
    After that, every time I walked by Jennifer Jong, she and her friends hissed “Witch!” Sometimes they wore garlic around their necks as if I were a vampire. I couldn’t wait to get out of that school and away from Jongy and her friends. But now I have gotten away, and I get to start at a whole new school.
    I study the material from St. Xavier’s, and before I know it, I’m falling asleep. I dream of crickets and dragonflies, leaping and flying over Basford and a group of smiling girls and boys—all of them surrounding me, Polly Peabody, who no one thinks is weird at all.
    It is a very good dream.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 24
     
    The Organic Psychic
     
    I love Sunday mornings—the last day of peace and quiet before the tourists swarm on Monday—and this one is especially warm and sunny and perfect. Basford and I are about to go swimming in the lake when Ophelia Baird’s red, white, and blue minivan screeches into the driveway, jerking to a stop.
    “Polly!” Ophelia jumps out.
    “Oh boy,” I mutter.
    “Who’s that?” asks Basford.
    I don’t even know how to answer him. Not because I don’t know Ophelia. Because she’s hard to explain.
    Ophelia’s an Organic Psychic.
    Yep. An Organic Psychic.
    An Organic Psychic is someone who can talk to the spirits of the natural world that have not been messed up by people, chemicals, or gossip. (That’s what Ophelia says, anyway.) Mom doesn’t really believe her, but she enjoys Ophelia’s company.
    She’s