All the Way Home Read Online Free PDF Page B

picnic.
    Ambrose the cop walked into the schoolyard, giving the boy a tiny nudge.
    Mariel moved around in back of the table, the red-white-and-blue crepe-paper tablecloth hiding her legs.
    “This is Billy Nightingale,” Ambrose said, his hand on Billy’s shoulder. He acted as if Billy were an ordinary boy who had just dropped in to say hello, instead of a wrinkled red-faced boy who was twitching his shoulder away.
    Ambrose grinned at Mrs. Warnicki with his even white teeth and gave Billy a nod. “See you later,” he said, and marched himself away from Billy and out of the schoolyard.
    “Welcome, Billy,” Mrs. Warnicki said. “Officer Ambrose told me you were coming.” She looked from Billy to Mariel. Maybe it was because Mariel’s fingers were tapping on the edge of the table so hard the cookies were trembling a little on their plates.
    Mariel didn’t even know why she was tapping. Maybe it was because Billy looked angry. She turned her head.No, not angry. Billy Nightingale was embarrassed. He was trying not to cry. She knew that feeling: a huge iron ball inside her chest, bursting to get out, trying to hold it in so no one else would know it was there, chest closing over it, throat closing.
    Without thinking, she stopped tapping, and up went her hand the tiniest bit, and then a little farther as she looked right at him. It was almost as if she were waving, a fluttery wave, a hold-on-Billy-Nightingale wave. But when she realized what she was doing, she quickly dropped her hands down among the folds of her blue dirndl skirt and peered at him from under her eyebrows.
    He was peering back.
    How could she have done that? She dropped her eyes. But then she couldn’t help herself. She took another peek. She liked the look of him. If he’d smooth out his face, he’d be just fine.
    And the strangest thing. He was looking at her as if he thought she had a nice face, too. She couldn’t remember that ever happening to her before. Not with a kid, anyway.
    But that was because he couldn’t see her legs. She knew her knees weren’t bad, almost matching, round like everyone else’s. And her legs were tan now and didn’t look as milk-white terrible as they did in the winter. They were bad enough, though. One was thin and curved a bit, the foot dropping by itself when she crossed one leg over the other. And the other leg! It wasshorter, much shorter. Even her brown lace shoes with the tassels didn’t match. One had a thick ugly heel to try to make the legs the same length.
    She looked at the lemonade pitcher. “I’ll pour for everyone,” she said. She wasn’t going to look at Billy Nightingale again. And she wasn’t going to move away from the table with those nice long strips of paper hiding her legs for the rest of the afternoon.

8

Brick
    M istakes! He had made so many since yesterday. Mistakes Pop never would have made. Pop thought ahead.
Apple trees need pruning in the spring. Claude said we have to get light in between the branches. And next year …
    No next year for their orchard. But there was a chance for Claude. If he went back and helped Claude, it wouldn’t be so terrible that their own farm had burned, wouldn’t be so terrible that he hadn’t been there. He had to get back to Windy Hill. No more mistakes.
    Some mistakes he hadn’t made, though, some things he had to give himself credit for.
    No one knew his name.
    Billy Nightingale
. All the policemen had had to dowas look at the signs over the stores and they would have known.
    But they hadn’t looked up. He had gotten away with it.
    Standing in the hot schoolyard now, one of the boys had pushed him into a boxball game, pitching the ball to him on a bounce. Brick slapped at it with his hand, heading for first base, hardly thinking about what he was doing.
    It had been so noisy in that big room at the police station last night. The clatter of the teletype, one cop calling to another, a phone ringing, made it hard for Brick to think. He wondered how