Drizzle Read Online Free PDF Page B

four years ago. It’s white and rectangular with a flat roof. Inside, the walls are made of concrete that is painted bright white to match the exterior. I’ve only been there once and I have to admit, I didn’t really like it. You couldn’t tramp dirt inside, since all the furniture and rugs were white too, and she didn’t have any good snacks except for carrot sticks. Honestly, I don’t know how she can stand to live there after living here.
    “This way,” Aunt Edith orders as we walk across the living room to the stairs in the northwest corner. We climb the circular stone steps, on the side of the castle where Patricia and I sleep. There are two rooms down our hall that are never used, so my first thought is that we’re going to go inside them.
    But Aunt Edith passes those doorways too.
    “One more flight, Polly,” she says.
    The third floor. No one goes to the third floor. Not even Beatrice.
    “But I thought—it’s locked . . .”
    “Of course it is,” she says. Aunt Edith fishes inside her black shirt and pulls out a thick golden necklace. Instead of a charm or pendant at the end of it, there’s a long bronze skeleton key.
    She pushes the entryway door to this floor open. Then she glides into the hall, stopping in front of a wooden door with a keyhole outlined in gold. She inserts the skeleton key into the lock and sweeps inside, as if she always walks into pitch-black rooms. I, on the other hand, freeze.
    “Polly?” Aunt Edith calls back for me. I can’t believe she wants me to go in there when it’s so dark. I take a baby step toward the doorway.
    “What about the light?” I ask weakly just as something big and black leaps out at me. “AGH!” I yell, and I leap back into the hall.
    A single ray of light glints through the circular window, spotlighting the creature. It’s a cricket. A huge cricket. A cricket the size of a squirrel.
    “Are you okay?” Aunt Edith uses her calm, stern voice.
    “Cuh-cuh-cricket,” I stammer.
    “They don’t bite,” she informs me.
    “I can’t see anything—”
    “Oh, Polly, are you afraid of the dark too?” Aunt Edith sighs.
    I stop where I am and think about this. “Yes,” I admit.
    I hear the clopping of her footsteps heading toward the doorway, but before they reach me, they turn in a different direction. She grunts, just barely, and there’s a loud clatter as something falls to the ground. The blast of light startles me.
    Aunt Edith is standing by a large picture window, a heap of drapes by her feet. She’s yanked the entire curtain rod down.
    “Well, come in,” she says as she pries the frame upward, allowing light and air to spill in.
    The first thing I see when I walk over the threshold is the ivy: pretty, green five-pointed-leaf ivy, crawling over all the walls and bookshelves that line this circular wall. It covers the floors in coils and stretches up the window edges and even seems to wrap around the pointed witch’s hat of a roof.
    I’m about to join Aunt Edith across the room when a strand of ivy literally lifts up off the ground and stares at me in the face.
    The blood rushes to my head as I stare at it, hovering in the air in front of my eyes.
    “Uh, Aunt Edith?”
    “The ivy won’t hurt you, dear.”
    I smile at the leaves, thinking that this must be how Eve felt when she was in the Garden of Eden looking at the serpent. The ivy wavers, and then curls back down at my feet.
    “Enid’s library,” Aunt Edith announces.
    I don’t know much about Enid, except that she was Grandmom’s mom, Rupert’s wife, and that her father, my great-great-grandfather, was an Italian prince. The story is that when he came to the U.S., he bought our property because it reminded him of his home in Italy. Then he built a castle (also to remind himself of his home) and became a rhubarb farmer. He’s the one who started the tradition of giving all the girls in his family an emerald ring. I look sadly down to my finger: I still can’t believe I lost