Come Along with Me Read Online Free PDF

cook there I thought I could be happy. I wanted the barest rock bottom of a room I could have, I wanted nothing but a place to sleep and a place to sit and a place to put my things; any decorating done to my environment is me.
    One reason is, the first time it happened was in a square room, my own room when I was about twelve. Before then, most of it was just whisperings and little half-thoughts, the way a child almost notices something, almost remembers, but this time it was real and I was not dreaming; I know when I’m dreaming. I sat up in bed in the middle of the night, and heard my own voice saying “What? What?” and then I heard another voice, not coming out of my own head—I know what comes out of my own head—saying “Find Rosalind Bleeker. Tell her Sid says hello.” Three times I heard that crazy voice say “Tell her Sid says hello.”
    I knew Rosalind Bleeker—in all the years since I’ve never forgotten her name—and because she was four or five years older and in high school I had a little trouble finding her the next day, but I caught her when she was walking home. I remember I had trouble getting her attention; I was just a little kid, and she was popular and pretty and always laughing. She was wearing a white blouse and a blue skirt and a charm bracelet. Her hair was curly. She was carrying her biology textbook and a blue-covered notebook. Her shoes were white. Her eyes were blue. She wore a little lipstick. I pulled at her sleeve and said “Rosalind, hey, Rosalind,” not very loud because she was a high-school girl. She turned around and looked down at me and frowned, because I was a kid and she was a high-school girl and here I was pulling at her sleeve. “Listen, Rosalind,” I said, “listen. I’m supposed to tell you Sid says to say hello.” “What?” she said. “Sid says to say hello,” I said, and then ran, because I had nothing more to say and I felt silly. I heard later she went home and hanged herself. I don’t know.
    Anyway, that was the first time. After that there were lots more, some more real than others. There was the time I said to my mother, “Grandma just picked up the phone to call you,” and she said, “That’s nice,” just as the phone rang. She looked at me funny; they always did after a while.
    â€œI dabble in the supernatural,” I told Mrs. Faun; she thought I was making some kind of a joke.
    I quit when I married Hughie; you’d have to.
    I remember another time when I sat by the window and my mother, who ought to have known better by then, said to me, “Why are you always brooding, staring out the window, never doing anything?”
    â€œI’m watching the peacocks walking on the lawn,” I said.
    â€œBut you ought to be out playing with the other children; why do you suppose we moved here to a nice neighborhood, so you could always sit looking out the window instead of playing with the other kids? Haven’t you got any friends? Doesn’t anyone like you?”
    â€œI’m watching the peacocks,” I tried to tell her. “They’re walking on the lawn and I’m watching them.”
    â€œYou ought to be out with your friends. What are peacocks doing on our lawn, ruining the grass?” and she came over to look out the window; as I say, she ought to have known better.
    Sometimes I knew and sometimes I didn’t; there would be times when I lay on my stomach on the floor watching creatures playing under the dining-room table, and I knew then of course that my mother wasn’t going to see them and was maybe going to put her foot through one when she came by to say why did they move to a nice neighborhood and I wouldn’t go out and make friends. Sometimes my good square room would be so full I just lay in bed and laughed. Sometimes weeks would go by and I would be reading some specially interesting book, or painting, or