Golden States Read Online Free PDF

her?” David asked.
    The telephone rang again. Mom got up to answer it. “No, better leave her be,” she said on the way to the kitchen. “I’m sure she’ll be back in a few minutes.”
    David thought maybe he should go anyway. He sat jiggling his legs, uncertain about whether or not to disobey. He looked over at Lizzie, who squinted at him as if he were too small to see clearly.
    “No she isn’t, Rob,” Mom said from the kitchen. “She just stepped out.”
    David and Lizzie sat listening.
    “Well, I don’t know,” Mom said. “For a little walk, is all. Yes, I’ll tell her. Of course. Bye.”
    David jumped up and ran for the front door. He would stay well behind Janet, hugging the shadows, so she’d never know she was being watched.
    Mom called his name, but he got to the door before her voice reached his ears. He had made it, technically. He slammed the door behind him and hoped the gesture would somehow offend Lizzie without offending Mom.
    The street was dazzlingly lit, by lamps designed to look old-fashioned, loaded with bulbs so bright it was painful to look into their square, spired housings. The lamps set up a ceiling of light that dimmed the sky and closed the neighborhood in. Lights burned in windows across the street, amber for reading and blue for television.
    David crossed over the front yard and peered, cautiously, up and down the street. He could not see her in either direction. He walked a couple of blocks up, and a couple down. She was nowhere. From far away, in the black folds of the hills, a coyote howled. He hated being out alone at night.
    He checked again for her. She seemed to have disappeared. Finally he went back home, because he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
    He paused in front of the house, struck by the hooded shadows the row of miniature pine trees cast against the wall. The Starks’ house was Spanish, like all the others in the neighborhood, its rough plaster walls painted the color of a manila envelope. Its red-tiled roof rose to a high off-center peak— inside the slanted living-room ceiling was two stories high, shot through with specks of silver glitter. The houses on either side were not half so nice, and even the one three houses down, which was the same as the Starks’, lacked some of the special details they had added over the years. Their front walk was lined with flowers, big brightly colored daisies like the ones in old cartoons that grew leafy arms and legs and did a little dance; by the front door, over the square white doorbell, the family name was spelled out in blue letters on white tiles. A black iron eagle had been nailed above the door, and on the stoop lay a green welcome mat, with three daisies in the upper right-hand corner.
    David went inside. “Did you find her?” Mom asked as he entered the dining room.
    “No,” he said. He had hesitated too long again and failed to be of use to anybody.
    “Well, I’m sure she’ll be all right,” Mom said. “Sit down and finish your ice-cold dinner.”
    “Lamb,” Lizzie said. “Yuck.” She speared a sprig of cauliflower with her fork and held it an inch from her mouth. Then she opened her mouth to the exact size of the cauliflower bud, and popped it in.
    “What’s the difference between Lizzie and a pig?” David said.
    “Sit. Eat,” Mom told him.
    The telephone rang. “I’ll get it,” David said. He sprinted forthe kitchen, and picked up the receiver in the middle of the second ring.
    “Hello?”
    “David?” A deep voice, crinkled with static.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “This is Rob.”
    “Hi, Rob.”
    “Is Janet back yet?”
    “No”
    “Do you know where she went?”
    “No. She went out.”
    “Tell her something for me, would you, David? Tell her I’ll keep calling until I talk to her, every half hour. All night if I have to. Will you tell her that?”
    “Okay.”
    “Good boy.”
    David sucked in a deep breath. “Don’t call her anymore, Rob, she doesn’t want to talk to you,” he