Falling into Place Read Online Free PDF Page A

summer?” she said to him.
    â€œThat was fun.”
    â€œRemember when I told you I hated you, and you cried?” She shook her head. “That was so amazing.” “I don’t think it was amazing,” Roy said. “You hurt my feelings.”
    â€œBut I say that to the girls all the time, and they say it to me,” said Margaret. “It doesn’t really mean anything.”
    â€œTo me it does.”
    â€œNo one says it to you because you’re an only child,” she said, remembering.
    â€œThey don’t that much. All I have is my parents.” Roy thought for a minute. “Do your
parents
tell you they hate you?”
    â€œOf course not,” said Margaret. It was true. As many times as she might have thought about hating Wendy, Wendy had never once thought about hating her, she suddenly realized. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. And it made her feel so glad, she laughed.
    â€œCome on.” She stepped up onto the edge of the curb and held her arms out to the sides. “Both arms out and no looking at your feet,” she said.
    â€œOkay,” said Roy, stepping up behind her. “But no more stone walls.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œWhat do you think the baby will be?” said Roy after a while.
    â€œAre you joking? All Wendy has is girls.”
    â€œMaybe having another girl will be nice,” he said. “It was kind of fun, having them around. When they weren’t crying, that is.”
    â€œWhich is never.” Margaret started to hop on one foot. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to listen to Sarah making snurgling noises through the wall every night.”
    â€œSnurgling?” Roy sounded interested. “I don’t think that’s a word.”
    â€œIt should be.”
    â€œWhat does snurgling sound like?”
    Margaret stopped. “Kind of like little bubbles are coming out of your nose, and you’re breathing through your mouth with phlegm in the back of your throat.” She started up again, on the other foot this time. “Sarah won’t wear anything except her bathing suit, so she always has a cold.”
    â€œEven in winter?” said Roy. He fell off the curb for the second time and gave up, following along behind her in the road.
    â€œThat’s better than Emily,” Margaret said. “For a long time, she wouldn’t wear anything at all.”
    â€œNothing?”
    â€œExcept boots. You couldn’t turn your back on her for a minute.” Margaret leapt off the curb and spun around. “No fair, cheater!”
    But there wasn’t any passion in it. They were home.
    Margaret felt a strange sinking feeling as she looked at Gran’s front door. It was black, like all the other doors. When they’d first moved into Carol Woods, Gran said she was going to paint it a different color every spring, the way she’d painted the front door at Blackberry Lane different colors. But then she found out that there was a rule against it, so she didn’t. Looking at it now, Margaret wished it was yellow or red—any color other than black that would mean Gran was behind it, the old Gran, the happy Gran.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” said Roy.
    Margaret looked at him, startled. She’d forgotten for a moment that he was there. “Why should anything be wrong?”
    â€œYou look kind of funny.”
    â€œLook who’s talking.” She peered at him closely for the first time. “You’re a mess,” she said, poking her finger into the hem of her T-shirt to make a washcloth.
    â€œNo spit,” he said, pulling back.
    â€œNo spit.” She put her hand on the back of his neck, the way she’d learned to do with the girls, and scrubbed at his face until the tear tracks running out from under his glasses joined with a dirty circle around his mouth. “There,” she said. “That’s better.”