Bronze Pen (9781439156650) Read Online Free PDF Page A

add, “And as far as Debra goes, that was over a long time ago.”
    â€œI’ve wondered about that,” her father said. “Just kind of outgrew each other, I guess?”
    â€œYeah,” Audrey said. “Something like that.”
    Having Debra as a best friend had begun soon after the Feltons moved into the old Mayberry house, just three houses down from the Abbotts, and Audrey had discovered that one of their kids was a girl who was just her age.
    At the time Audrey had thought the fact that Debra’sfamily had moved into the Mayberry house was a good omen. As if the old brown-shingled house was somehow destined to provide her with special friends—and she went on thinking so for quite a while. It wasn’t long before she and Debra were sitting next to each other every day on the school bus and then spending at least an hour or two together after school, either at the Abbotts’ or the Feltons’. More often at the Abbotts’, actually, after Debra’s older siblings started spying on them and making fun of their games. Games like making fairy circles in the acacia grove and mixing magic potions, which, when secretly applied to people’s hands and foreheads—people like Debra’s big brother—were supposed to make them into enlightened people. Or at least a little easier to get along with.
    In those days Debra had really liked their games. Not that she was good at thinking them up, but she was always very enthusiastic about Audrey’s ideas. And when she told Audrey she had a big imagination, she usually, but not always, said it in a complimentary way.
    But then things had begun to change. Even before Audrey’s father got sick and she had to be at home every afternoon, Debra had started being less interested in the kinds of things she and Audrey had done. Little by little they’d pretty much stopped spending time together, even when they had a chance.
    â€œDebra’s too busy trying to be a hippie, I guess,” Audrey told her father now, and then, wanting to changethe subject, she added, “Let’s talk about something else. Something more interesting.”
    â€œAll right. I vote for that,” her father said. “Let’s see!” He turned his chair in a circle, looking around the room. “Something to make things a little more exciting? I know. We could let Sputnik out if you think you could round him up before your mother gets home. That’s sure to liven things up a bit.”
    It was a good idea, but a quick roundup plan would be necessary. Although Hannah Abbott claimed to be a bird lover like her mother, she had very little patience with pint-size parrot types who nibbled chunks out of the woodwork and pooped on the dining room table. At least not when she had just returned from work, tired and, more often than not, a little bit cranky.
    Audrey headed for the cockatiel’s cage, saying, “Oh, I can catch him, all right.” And to Sputnik himself, “If you won’t go in when I tell you to I’ll just have to get the butterfly net. Won’t I?”
    As his door opened, Sputnik shrieked a rude answer and, as always, went into orbit. Around the room he flew, squawking madly, shrieking as he hung upside down from the chandelier, then flying again and dipping down to barely miss their faces—Audrey’s, John’s, even Beowulf ’s. It wasn’t until he’d threatened to land on each of their heads several times that he settled for Beowulf ’s, where he proceeded to strut up and down, dragging his wing tipsand whistling a tuneless, wordless something that managed to sound like a challenge.
    For a while Beowulf, a natural-born pacifist, only sighed, grunted, closed his eyes, and pretended to go back to sleep. But Sputnik went on being typically aggressive, pecking Beowulf ’s ears and screaming four-letter words, until the dog threw him off by shaking his head. After several