Little Blackbird Read Online Free PDF Page A

same for anyone.”
    “I know,” Matthias said.
    When she looked up at him, he was smiling, and she wondered if the Hamilton men knew the power of the gesture. Her shoulders relaxed.
    “And why couldn’t it have been an angel who rescued him?” she asked, sliding the toe of her sandal against the floor.
    Matthias chuckled. “My brother? Being visited by an angel? Highly unlikely. But knowing it really was you, they could be one and the same.”
    The compliment pulled a hesitant smile from Kate. She could tell Matthias wasn’t trying to flatter her. His compliments were kind and sincere. She nodded goodbye. At the checkout counter, Kate saw curiosity in Sally’s eyes, but she didn’t ask Kate about her conversation with Geoffrey or with Matthias. After all, if she couldn’t ask Kate if she could borrow a pencil at school, then Sally certainly couldn’t ask Kate about the Hamilton boys.

    K ATE STOOD IN front of her mirror and rolled long pieces of her hair around a hairbrush handle. Then she tried to bobby pin the roll of hair to the top of her head. When she pulled out the hairbrush, her fine hair sagged against her head like a deflated balloon. Someone knocked on her bedroom door, and she snatched the bobby pin from her hair and raked her fingers through the strands.
    “Come in,” she called with a voice pitched too high.
    Her mama pushed open the door and stepped inside. “What are you doing?”
    Kate fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. “Nothing.”
    Her mama’s dark eyes narrowed. “Every dish in the cabinets is trembling. The wind chimes are ringing outside, and there’s no breeze. And there’s enough energy in this room to light up the town. You’re doing something .”
    Kate looked at her reflection. “I was only messing with my hair.” She glanced at her mama but didn’t meet her gaze. And thinking about seeing Geoffrey tonight.
    “What’s wrong with your hair?”
    Kate pulled her fingers through her hair again. “Nothing. I was just trying a new style. Like the girls in town.”
    “What girls?” her mama asked.
    Kate sighed. “The pretty ones, Mama.”
    “You’re a pretty one.”
    Kate shook her head. “No, I’m not. Look at me. I’m–”
    “You’re what?” her mama interjected. She crossed her arms over her chest.
    At least half a dozen answers popped into her head—dark, Indian, skinny, weird, awkward, uncool—but Kate answered, “Different.”
    “And you’d rather be, what? Exactly like someone else?”
    “Maybe more like Sally Rensforth.”
    Her mama laughed, but it coated everything in the room like ashes, leaving a taste on Kate’s tongue that was as bitter as maror. Kate shivered.
    Her mama’s mouth pinched. “You’d like to be the same as someone who has nightmares every night? Like someone who is still afraid of the dark.”
    Kate whirled around. “Mama, you don’t know that.”
    “Don’t I? How about Martha Lee? You want to be like her?”
    Kate shrugged. “She’s pretty. Lots of boys like her.”
    “She steals her father’s liquor and hides it beneath her bed. She also steals from the drugstore on a regular basis. Patty Adams is in love with her first cousin. Sarah Connelly–”
    “ Mama –”
    “Don’t mama me. Why would you want to be like any of them?”
    “People already think we’re weird enough without you sharing their secrets.” Kate slumped onto her bed. She stared down at her colorful, patchwork skirt that fell to her ankles. Not a single girl in town wore the same kind of clothes Kate did. Those girls all looked like they shopped on Main Street, while Kate looked like a girl who’d been dressed by gypsies.
    “I’m only telling you their secrets, and I’m trying to prove that being like everyone else isn’t always a good thing.” Her mama sat beside her on the bed and sighed. She pushed Kate’s hair behind her shoulders.
    Kate laced her fingers together in her lap and stared at her hands. “It was always so easy for Evan. He