The Stranger by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online

Nicoletta. How she wanted to touch him again. But he was more like the stone than like a boy. He was entirely within himself, and only the few spare syllables of speech escaped his control. “I left,” explained Nicoletta. “I was afraid.”
    Jethro nodded. “I can understand that you were afraid.” His eyes looked down into an emotional cave of their own.
    “I want to go back,” said Nicoletta. She felt light and bright, as if she were the flame of a candle.
    He was shaken. “Caves are dangerous, Nicoletta.” He had never used her name before. She took his hand as if it were her possession, as if they had both agreed that she might have his hand, and again he stared at the way her fingers wrapped around his. He seemed caught in emotion so deep that there were no words for it. Perhaps even a person used to speech, like Nicoletta, could not have explained his emotion.
    “Please don’t go back,” said Jethro. His voice was meant only for her. It was not a whisper, and yet it did not carry; it was intended to travel only as far as her ears and then stop. He sounded as if he had had a lifetime of practice at preventing his speech from being heard. It was the opposite of what anybody else did with speech. “It’s dangerous, Nicoletta.”
    “Then you do know!” she said. “You have been in there, Jethro. You know what I’m talking about.”
    He looked at the stone and drew himself together, becoming more remote, more taut. “I know what you’re talking about,” he admitted.
    “Let’s go together,” she said. She tried to pull him around the stone to the straight and silken path that lay beyond.
    But he did not cooperate. “You must go home,” he said. “You must not come this way again.”
    Nicoletta did not listen to him. She did not want warnings. She wanted Jethro. “Where do you live?” she said. “Tell me where you live!” She explored his fingers with hers, slipping between them, pressing down with her thumb, feeling his bones and sinews.
    This is what falling in love is, thought Nicoletta. It’s looking at a boy and wanting to know every single thing there is to know about him, and wanting to know every inch of him, and every emotion of him, and every word in him.
    Jethro’s eyelids trembled, closing down over his eyes as if he could shutter himself away, and then they opened wide, and he stared back into her eyes.
    He loves me, too, thought Nicoletta. Still holding his hand in one of hers, she lifted her other hand to his face. As if reading mirrors, he did exactly what she did. Fingertips approached cheeks. Nicoletta and Jethro shivered with the heat of first love’s first touch.
    His hand slid cupped over her chin and around her face. His fingers went into her hair. He drew the gleaming yellow locks through his fingers, and wound them gently over his palm. “You have beautiful hair,” he said in a husky voice. His lips pressed together, coming to a decision, while her lips opened, ready.
    Kiss me, thought Nicoletta. Please kiss me. If you kiss me, it will seal this. It will be love. I can tell by the way you’re standing here that you want to be in love with me. Kiss me, Jethro!
    But a car came slowly, noisily, down the road.
    They were jolted by the sudden sight and sound of the vehicle.
    This had been a place in which the twentieth century did not come, and now it was driving right up.
    She knew the car.
    It was Christo’s.
    Jethro’s breathing was ragged. “Do not tell him!” whispered Jethro with a ferocity that frightened her. “You must not tell him!” Nicoletta was stunned by the force of Jethro’s command. “You have promised to keep a secret! You must keep the promise, Nicoletta!”
    Christo swung out of the van, leaving the motor idling.
    “Promise,” breathed Jethro, with a terrible force, as if his lungs were going to explode.
    But she did not answer him.
    “Hi, Christo,” she said. “Do you know Jethro?”
    Christo shook his head. She introduced them, using