Beautiful Blue World Read Online Free PDF Page A

scarf.”
    I looked up, taking my clothes from her like a hug. She stayed close as I put them on.
    She smiled. “Come on, silly.”
    And we went outside together.
    —
    “Mathilde? I’m sorry to interrupt your work, but could you watch Tye while I make dinner?”
    I shut my book with relief. I’d spent the past several afternoons stuck at my desk, under Mother’s orders to prepare for the test.
    “I don’t think they played outside today. She has a lot of energy,” Mother said.
    I followed her downstairs, where Tye was leaping between the sofa and the chairs.
    “She’s been running through the kitchen. With the boiling water…”
    “I can watch her.”
    The best trick to get Tye to stop whatever she was doing was to do something fun without her.
    I got out our can of crayons and a few sheets of paper—our last sheets, actually. Paper was getting scarce.
    But it seemed like an okay time to use it.
    I spread a sheet out on the floor in the living room and lay on my stomach, tipping over the can of crayons.
    Crayons were a treasure, too. Our small collection was all mismatched stubs.
    Tye was still jumping around me as I selected a green crayon and started drawing a large circle.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Homework. Serious stuff.”
    I continued to draw.
    “Can I help?”
    “Oh, probably not. It’s
really
hard.”
    “Not too hard for me.”
    “Well, I have to draw a picture of our house.”
    “Our house isn’t a circle. And it’s not green.”
    “Oh.” I stopped. “What would you do, then?”
    She sighed and shoved me out of the way, picked beige crayons, and started drawing squares and rectangles.
    I sighed, too, as she settled and started drawing a pony outside of our house.
    Not that we had a pony.
    Kammi came home from her friend’s house. “What are you doing?” she asked.
    “Mathilde’s homework,” Tye said.
    Kammi looked at me, about to ask, but I shook my head.
    “You know what would be really fun?” Kammi asked. “If we could use the paints.”
    “Why
don’t
we?” I asked. “They’ll only dry up and go to waste. We can finish the paints and paper together. Let’s just go upstairs so we’re not in Mother’s way.”
    Tye scooped up the papers and took them upstairs while Kammi put away the crayons. I found the paint tubes and brushes, and squeezed the colors into a tin. Red, green, yellow, blue.
    The girls each painted a picture. When I went to refresh the paints for them, the tubes felt all squeezed out.
    But there was only one more piece of paper anyway.
    “Let’s do our handprints,” I said.
    My sisters giggled as I brushed rainbow swirls of paint onto their hands. I pressed Tye’s onto the center of the paper. Then Kammi’s outside that. They both held up their hands, grinning. I painted my left hand, and Kammi took the brush to paint my right. My bigger prints joined theirs on the paper, on the outside, sheltering them.
    Little, Middle, and Big.
    The handprints looked like they belonged to one person who was growing, captured a few years apart.
    I pinned it to the wall. My sisters stood back, admiring. We ignored the fingerprint smudges I’d made at the corners of the paper and on the wall, even though we were never allowed to color on the walls.
    “It’s beautiful,” Tye said.
    And it was.
    Still holding our hands in the air, we looked sadly at the remaining paint in the tin.
    “I wish we could paint more,” Tye said. And then she pressed her entire hand into the paints.
    “Tye!” Kammi cried.
    Warmth pressed on the inside of my ribs, way up high, by my heart.
    “Do the other one,” I said.
    Kammi’s mouth fell open, but Tye removed her hand and pressed the other into the paint.
    I climbed onto the chair and then onto the desk, and signaled to Tye to follow me, which she did, carefully, her hands still raised.
    She pressed her palms and then her fingers spread wide against the white wall.
    “Kammi?” I asked.
    I couldn’t tell them that our house would