The Silent Boy by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online Page B

a fairy-tale storybook one. It was just a house. They invited my family to come to their cottage for the holiday called Fourthofjuly, which I didn't understand, and for fireworks.
    I remembered the scent, the sky, the heat, the wide-brimmed straw hats we wore to protect our faces from the sun, and the white shoes and black. The shoes and stockings and dresses—even the hats—were removed, at some point, because my memory told of Jessie and me, wearing only our bloomers, wading at the edge of the lake. We chased tiny silvery fish—minnows! Someone told us they were called minnows, and we said that to each other, laughing: "Minnows! Minnows!"
    After a while we were shivering, even though the day was hot. My fingertips were puckered, pale lavender. Our mothers rubbed us dry with rough towels. Jessie fretted because there were pine needles stuck to her damp feet. We played in the sand at the edge of the lake.
    The parents sat on the porch, talking, while Jessie and I amused ourselves, still half-naked in the sunshine, digging with bent tin shovels in the damp sand. Jessie had a pail and I didn't. I pretended that I didn't care about her pail,
though secretly I wished it were mine, with the bright painted picture printed on its metal side: pink-faced children building castles, green-blue water, foamed with white, curling behind them.
    Stealthily I followed a beige toad that hopped heavily away into tall grasses edging the small beach. Soon I could no longer see the toad (I had begun to think of him as "my" toad) but when I waited, silent, I saw the grass move and knew that he had hopped again. I waited, watched. I followed where the grass moved. It was taller than my head, now, and I was surrounded by it and was briefly frightened, feeling that I had become invisible and not-there with the high reeds around me. But the world continued to be close by. I could hear the grownups talking on the porch, still.
    "Where's Katy?" I heard my mother ask, suddenly.
    "Jessie, where did Katy go?" Mrs. Wood called in an unconcerned voice.
    "I don't know." Jessie's voice was not that far away from me.
    "She was right there. I saw her just a minute ago." That was my father's voice.
    "It's amazing, how quickly they scamper off, isn't it?" Mrs. Wood again. She was using a cheerful voice, but I could tell that now she was worried, and I was made pleased and proud by the worry.
    "Katy!" My mother was calling now. "Katy!"
    I should call back, I knew. But I liked the feeling of being concealed there, squatting in the moist earth, with the high grass golden above me. I liked hearing things happen around me, being an observer, but hidden. The breeze blew the grass and it closed above my head, creating a small, secret place where I fit. I had already forgotten my toad in the new excitement of being lost to the grownups. So I held still.
    "You go that way, Caroline," my father said. "Check over there behind the woodpile and by the shed. I'll look in this direction."
    "She wouldn't have gone into the house, would she? She would have had to pass us, to go into the house. We would have seen her. Katy!"
    "Jessie, are you sure you don't know where she went?" Mr. Wood sounded angry, as if he were scolding his little girl.
    Jessie began to cry. It pleased me somehow, that she was crying. She deserved to cry, because she owned a tin pail with bright paintings on its side.
    "Katy! Katy!" My mother's voice was quite far from me now.
    "Let's think." Jessie's mother said this. "
Hush,
Jessie." (Jessie was still crying loudly.) "She wouldn't have gone far because she was barefoot. It's stony out there beyond the house. It would hurt her feet."
    "Kaaaaty!" It was like a song in my mother's voice, when she called it that way. "Henry," she called to my father, "she isn't over this way."
    "Everyone be absolutely quiet for a moment," Mr. Wood commanded. "She might be calling and we wouldn't hear her."
    It was silent except for Jessie, who was now howling. In my