Everybody's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

first ring.
    “I was wondering if I should call,” he said, “so I’m glad you did.”
    “It’s been crazy out here.”
    “You sound tired.”
    “I am.”
    “Well, get some sleep, and we’ll talk tomorrow.” They said goodnight. Beamer felt cheered and soothed by the thirty-second conversation.
    She went downstairs. Her mother was sitting by the stove in the store, knitting and talking with the few remaining Woodies. She looked up and smiled. “All asleep?”
    Beamer nodded. “They were pretty beat. I’m going to bed now myself.” The Woodies chorused a goodnight. Beamer’s mother just smiled slightly, then mouthed a silent “Thank you.”
    Beamer climbed the stairs. She lay awake for a long time, until she heard the last of the friends leave and her mother go to bed. She pictured her mother calmly knitting, cooking, answering questions throughout the day’s chaos, and she wondered how deep the calm truly was. Then she put it all out of her mind and fell asleep.

Chapter 4
    Beamer and her brother usually rode the schoolbus. On winter mornings it wasn’t even light when they waited by the highway. For nearly an hour the bus meandered between the scattered hamlets and isolated country homes, collecting children. They stood in groups or alone at the side of the road, some of them already cold and exhausted from walking from their homes to the stop. The winter afternoons were already growing dark when the bus let the last two riders, Beamer and Johnny, out at the store.
    Beamer had long ago discovered that if she tried to study or read on the bus she would get sick, so she spent the time chatting with the people around her—who were younger and less interesting each year—dozing, or staring out the window. Twice a day, five days a week, nine months of the year. She knew the route well. Beamer was now the only high school student on the bus. The others had either started driving themselves or had dropped out of school.
    Beamer had once begged to drive. “It can’t be because you don’t trust my driving. You let me drive on some of my dates with Andy.”
    “That’s only fair,” said her mother. “There’s no reason why he should always have to come out here to pick you up.”
    “Well, why not to school?”
    “Why waste gas when the bus goes anyway?” said her mother. “Besides, winter driving is no joke.”
    “Forty miles a day?” said her father. “Forty miles of burning fuel and spitting out carbon monoxide just for your personal convenience? I’m surprised, Beamer, that you even ask.”
    Beamer had begged only once. When decisions were made in her family, they were assumed to be final.
    The addition of Daryl’s children changed everything.
    “You can take the car this week,” said her mother on Monday morning. “Teresa and Kari have never taken the bus to school, and that’s the last thing they need to cope with now. Can you imagine—Sandra used to drive them every day, and the bus went right past their door?”
    “Imagine that,” said Beamer.
    Her mother handed her the car keys. “They’re yours for the next five days. But lose them, dent the car, run out of gas, or pick up any hitchhikers during the week, and you die. By my hands.”
    Beamer deposited the girls and Johnny at their school, then drove to the high school. It was a new, sprawling, one-story building on the edge of town. She parked, shouldered her backpack, and jogged across the slushy parking lot. When she walked into the airy atrium-commons, she was besieged by friends, acquaintances, strangers, and one or two sworn enemies. She had almost forgotten she was news.
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said repeatedly. The first warning bell rang and the crowd thinned. Beamer trotted across the commons, then sprinted down a long hall. Andy and a few friends were leaning against the wall by her locker.
    “Good morning,” Andy said, kissing her lightly on the lips.
    “Oh my God,” said Sarah, “I don’t