Can't Get There from Here Read Online Free PDF

and a tight black skirt and boots.
    “What’s that supposed to say, Maybe?” he asked.
    “Money for eggs and crayons.”
    Jewel laughed. “Oh, my dear, you are priceless! Do you have anything to write with?”
    I still had the pen I found. Jewel took it and changed my sign. “There. That’s better. Didn’t they teach you to spell in school?”
    “What school?” I asked.
    “You never went to school?”
    “Here and there, but never for long.”
    A man came out of the store carrying a white plastic shopping bag in each hand. He looked at me and my sign. “Eggs, huh?” He put down the bags and took out four eggs. Then a lady came out and gave me some, too.
    Now I needed crayons. I crossed out the eggs part of my sign and stood outside a store that sold newspapers and candy and postcards. A woman came out with two little kids. She had smooth blond hair and wore a long blue coat with brown fur at the collar and the ends of the sleeves. The kids were blond with matching pink barrettes in their hair. They wore matching denim jackets over matching white sweaters.
    One of the kids pointed at me. “Mommy, look.”
    The woman put her hands on their shoulders and tried to steer them away. “Come on, let’s go this way.”
    But the kids didn’t want to go.
    “What’s wrong with her face?” one asked.
    “What does she want?” asked the other.
    “Nothing,” the woman said. “I want you to come.”
    But the kids kept staring. “What does that say?”
    “I need crayons,” I said.
    The kids were so cute. Their mouths became circles. “We have crayons, Mommy!”
    “I want you to come right now,” the woman said sharply. “Do not talk to that person.”
    “Why?” asked one of the kids.
    “Just don’t!” The woman took each kid by the hand and yanked them away.
    I stayed outside the store until a man came out. Hewas wearing a white shirt and a brown tie, but no jacket. “Go away,” he said.
    “You don’t own the sidewalk,” I said. That was what Maggot always said when they told him to move.
    “You’re hurting my business,” he said. “Customers won’t come in with you standing here.”
    I shrugged like I didn’t care.
    The man went back into the store and came out with a small box of crayons. “Now go away.”
    That’s what I did.
    You have to color the eggs carefully. Crayons get hard when it’s cold, and if you press too much on the shells they break. It was getting dark when I finished coloring them. I went up to the movie theater near Central Park. At night in New York, people stand on lines to get in. They wait in the rain and snow and cold. They talk to their friends and drink coffee. I stood on the sidewalk near the line of people and started to juggle the eggs.
    When I was little, a man who liked my mom taught me to juggle. I don’t remember his name, just that he had brown skin and curly black hair. He said I was a good juggler for my age because I could keep four balls going at once. The people who ran the circus found out and sometimes they dressed me up like a clown and let me juggle in the circus. People would clap and laugh. They liked to see a little kid juggle. My mom liked it because she got extra money when I juggled. She liked me then.
    But I got older and they stopped letting me juggle. Mom said people who came to the circus expected a kid who was twelve to do better tricks than I could do. But it was different outside the movie theater. I didn’t have to be so good. I just had to get people to watch me.
    “I bet you’re wondering which egg will fall and break first,” I said when they were watching. “The red one? The blue? Maybe the yellow or the orange.”
    “Or maybe none of them,” someone in the line called back.
    “What if I do tricks?” I asked, tossing one of the eggs up and catching it behind my back while I juggled the other three in front of me.
    “One of them will probably break,” someone said.
    “Want to bet which one?” I asked.
    “Whichever one