The Education of Ivy Blake by Ellen Airgood Read Free Book Online Page B

you. We want you here, when the baby comes and everything. You’re ours, that’s how we feel. Me and Grammy and Mom were talking about it last night and we all agreed. Even though you’re not ours, of course, we know that. You’re your own person. But you’re
our
own person, if that makes any sense.”
    â€œThanks,” Ivy said thickly. She should add something more, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know what it would be. She thought of lying in bed with Aunt Connie’s blanket pulled up, pretending to be “a girl.”
What girl
was the question she couldn’t seem to answer.
    â€œWell—I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Prairie said after a few seconds had ticked by. “That’s good.”
    â€œIt was a rotten weekend.”
    â€œShould’ve let me bring you that ginger ale.”
    â€œYou’re probably right,” Ivy said.

Monday morning, Ivy scuffed down the front steps, her backpack heavy on her shoulders. The tulip in their yard had blown apart in all the rain, and the words Ms. Mackenzie said last week slid into Ivy’s brain:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
It sounded like poetry. She’d have to look it up next time she was in the library. She sighed and plodded onward.
    All through the first half of the day Ivy kept her head down and her mouth shut and tried to think herself invisible. At lunchtime she headed for a table at the far side of the cafeteria. She sat with her back to the room and took her sandwich out of her sack. The peanut butter tasted like salty glue. The cherry jam her mom had brought home from the gas station tasted like corn syrup. Her lie that she’d been sick over the weekend seemed to be coming true. She didn’t feel good at all. When the sandwich was half gone she took out her banana. It was soft. She pulled the peel halfway off, then sat looking at it glumly.
    â€œOh, yum.” Tate slid onto the bench across from her. “I love old bananas. I never get one. My grandma always turns them into banana bread, which I hate. Isn’t that dumb?”
    â€œUm—no. You like what you like, everybody does.”
    Tate took an apple out of her bag and polished it on her shirtsleeve. She was about to take a chomp out of it when she suddenly stuck it out toward Ivy. “Want to trade?”
    Ivy’s eyes widened. “Really?”
    â€œIf an apple a day keeps the doctor away, I should be set for life. It’s all my mom ever puts in.”
    Ivy held out the banana and took Tate’s apple.
    â€œHurrah!” Tate took a bite, and said, still chewing, “Don’t tell my grandma, she’ll be mushing it up with walnuts and flour quicker than you can say spit.”
    Ivy started. “My friend Prairie says that.”
    â€œâ€˜Quicker than you can say spit?’ She must be good people, then.”
    Ivy nodded and chomped into 4the apple, which was crispy and tart and perfect.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    By the end of the day she thought life was going to go on more or less as usual despite what had happened at the diner. But as she was walking past Ms. Mackenzie’s desk, Ms. Mackenzie said, “Ivy, I’d like to talk to you.”
    Ivy stared at the three small pottery jugs that sat on a corner of the desk. Ms. Mackenzie had pencils in the orange one, pens in the blue, and dry-erase markers in the green. The jugs were curvy and squat and their colors were bright but not too glaringly bright. They were nice.
    â€œIt won’t take long.”
    Ivy wondered how you’d draw the pots to show how the light caught their curved edges.
    â€œIvy?”
    The room smelled of the glue they’d been using to paste up their geography projects before the bell rang. Ivy’s was a collage about the Himalayan mountains. Cutting the pictures out of magazines, looking for the right shapes and colors, she had felt like she’d left one room of