Slap Your Sides by M. E. Kerr Read Free Book Online Page A

neighborhood safe again?”
    â€œThere aren’t any dogs involved, Daria. Just human beings like us.”
    â€œWhy should Danny Jr. and Dean have to fight them and not Bud?”
    â€œBecause Bud doesn’t agree with our government that the only way to stop madness is to become mad yourself.”
    She sighed and shook her head. Finally she said, “Jubal? Let’s not talk about this. You can report me to the police—I don’t care. But let’s you and me just be friends, and leave the war out of it.”
    â€œSounds good to me.”
    â€œMe too.”
    I told her I wouldn’t tell on her if she’d vow not to go near the store window again. She said she wouldn’t, because she thought she really liked me. I knew I really liked her.
    I showed her the Caldwell book and told her about my cousin Natalia, and she said she would rather live in Greenwich Village than anyplace in the world because a poet named Edna St. Vincent Millay had lived there.
    â€œI suppose you don’t know her,” she teased.
    â€œI’m not a big reader anymore. I don’t have time.” I explained that several afternoons a week I helped out at the Hart farm, and I worked all day there on Saturdays.
    â€œI see,” she said. “You have time to read dirty parts of books, but not things like “‘O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!’”
    â€œHold thee close enough?”
    â€œHold thee close enough.”
    â€œWhy does she say hold thee close enough?”
    â€œNot because she’s one of you Quakers, if that’s what you think. It’s just poetic.”
    She looked at her watch. “I have to go. I said I’d be home by midnight. My parents think I’m at the Sweet Creek High party.”
    â€œIn those clothes?”
    â€œIt was a masquerade,” she said. “Come as someone you admire.”
    She wore the plaid mackinaw over her shoulders and under it Danny Jr.’s green-and-white letter sweater, won when he was SCHS’s star quarterback. Her jeans were rolled at the cuffs, and she had on black boots.
    â€œThen you’re supposed to be Danny Jr.?”
    â€œI’d rather go to a party as my favorite brother than be at Wride Them Cowboy. Who wants to spend New Year’s Eve with your parents’ friends?” Her feet were keeping time with the song on the jukebox, “Be Careful, It’s My Heart.”
    She suddenly sang out, “ It’s not the ground you walk on, it’s my heart.”
    â€œYou have a nice voice,” I said.
    â€œThanks to Mrs. Ochevsky, my singing teacher.”
    â€œWhy, she lives right next door to the Harts, in Doylestown.”
    â€œSometimes I see the horses, and I wish I could ride again. I used to ride at Luke Casper’s, with Danny Jr., but I had to choose between riding lessons and voicelessons. Mrs. Ochevsky won out. I’d like to sing with a band someday.”
    â€œYou sound swell, so you should be able to do it.”
    Daria leaned down and blew away some spilled sugar. Then she stood and asked me if I was going home. We didn’t live that far away from each other.
    â€œI’m not going home yet. I’m supposed to be guarding the store.”
    â€œI remember when I used to shop at your store, you were there sometimes. Were you working there?”
    â€œEver since I can remember. There was always something for me to do.”
    â€œWhat needs to be done in that store is paint the walls.”
    â€œPaint the walls?”
    She nodded.
    â€œThey were just painted last spring,” I said. Marty Allen, my best friend, had helped Bud and me do the job. Tommy was always at basketball practice.
    â€œI hate the color of the walls in your store. They remind me of upchuck. Your father should paint everything white.”
    â€œI’ll tell him.”
    â€œI never meant to hurt your dad, Jubal.”
    â€œBut you did. I have to tell you