Drizzle by Kathleen Van Cleve Read Free Book Online Page B

supertall, like over six feet. When she gets out of the car, she lifts her head, looking like a giant, and gazes around the farm. For a couple of seconds, she closes her eyes and touches the middle of her forehead with her right hand, almost like beginning the sign of the cross. When she opens her eyes, she snaps a smile firmly into place.
    “This is Basford,” I tell her.
    “Of course it is!” she says, as if she’s met him twenty times before. “You sweet boy. You did the right thing, coming here, you know. Just like your father said.”
    Basford raises his eyebrows but I just shrug. Ophelia’s always like this. She’s the looniest person I know. “Is your mother inside?” she asks me.
    “I think so.”
    “Good. I’ve brought some new pesticides.” I watch her as she grabs a big paper bag out of her van. She holds the bag to her chest, about to walk, but then she stops, closing her eyes. She sniffs. “Now that’s a new one.” She frowns. “Distress.” She sniffs again.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Hmm. Perhaps it’s the larvae. I’ll talk to your mother.”
    “Larvae?”
    “Or the curlicues. I’m not sure. I’m feeling gray. And red. And perhaps some brown. Definitely brown. The auras, you know. Yours is wonderful, by the way. Yellow and green and blue. Just superb.Yours is lovely too, young man.”
    She smiles briskly before she walks into the castle through the side door.
    “How did she know what my dad said?” Basford asks.
    “She’s a good guesser,” I tell him truthfully. “She once told me she could predict the future by looking at the shape of a zucchini.”
    Basford’s eyes widen. “Can she?”
    “What do you think?” I ask. We’ve reached the edge of the lake. “She’s really nice, so it’s okay she’s kind of a kook.”
    I swing my foot in the lake, gauging the temperature. “Ready?”
    Basford grins, and I jump in the water. He cannon-balls in after me. Yesterday I showed him all around our property—that is, when he wasn’t playing soccer with Freddy or listening to my father explain his rhubarb research. He’s so patient he even listened to Patricia talk about her latest shopping trip. Still, I have to admit—it’s pretty fun having someone my age on the farm.
    “Race ya!” Basford says as he takes off for the other shore.
    “Cheater!” I yell, swimming after him. I go as fast as I can, but it’s a little weird because with every stroke, I feel a strange tingle in my finger. When I finally reach him, I hold my hands up out of the water, examining them. It must be what my health teacher calls growing pains, or “the passage into adolescence.” I’ll be twelve in December. It doesn’t really matter; they don’t hurt that much.
    “Watch this!” Basford calls as he plunges his head below the water line. As the minutes pass, I figure out that he’s testing out our non-drownable enchanted lake.
    Just when I’m starting to get bored, Basford swims up, breaking the water’s surface. “I can’t believe it! Four minutes and I’m not even dizzy!”
    “One of Freddy’s friends made it for an hour once,” I tell him. “Mom said he was an overachiever.”
    Basford smiles widely, looking like a little kid. He dives back under and I see him examining all the sparkling rocks and colored fish. There’s something about our water that magnifies everything, almost like you’re scuba diving with high definition goggles.The seaweed on the bottom, the random fish, and the stones in the sand—everything is as clear as if you saw it through a sparkling clean window.
    He pops up and splashes me. “Marco!” he yells.
    “Polo!” I yell back.
    We swim and play games for the next two hours. Even Patricia joins us for a while, though she just swims boring laps, touching one side of the lake and then the other, over and over again.
    When Beatrice comes outside to tell us that lunch is ready, Basford and I paddle over to the edge next to Patricia. But before we climb