Looks Over(Gives Light Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

"We've just got to figure out how to make this living arrangement...permanent."
     
    "Of course it's permanent," said Granny, puzzled.  She sat down with a cup of roasted acorn tea.  "I told that Officer Whatsit that I'd be willing to take him in until they found you."
     
    The unspoken understanding was that the police were never going to find Dad.  A loophole in the Constitution meant he couldn't be arrested if he stayed in Nettlebush.  Reservations operated off of their own individual governments--and the crime Dad was wanted for had happened in Wyoming.
     
    "Yes, I know.  But you're his foster parent, not his legal guardian," Dad explained.  "The only way we can guarantee he stays in Nettlebush is if you adopt him."
     
    "Well, then," Granny said, and sipped at her tea.
     
    I waved goodbye to the both of them when I left for school--books in my backpack, springy hair defying Granny's obstinate orders--but I felt kind of nauseous.  I loved Granny more than anything.  I was grateful beyond words that she had given me a home.  I just didn't like the word "adoption."  I was Dad's kid; I had been Dad's kid all my life.  It unnerved me to consider a reality where, at least legally, I wasn't Dad's kid anymore.
     
    The school building was a couple of yards away from the church.  I hadn't paid it much attention over the summer, except for the playground between the red pines out back; I'd taken Annie's brother Joseph to play on the rope swings a couple of times.
     
    Now, coming up on the schoolhouse, I saw that it was only one story, red brick, with an uncommonly flat roof and old windows on its sides.  The double doors stood open, preceded by a small flight of stone steps.
     
    It looked colonial, I thought.  Probably it was the exact same school our ancestors had attended in the 1800s.
     
    I climbed the steps and went through the doors.  I stopped, caught off guard.
     
    The room was big and wide with a low ceiling, a chalkboard at the far end and bookshelves sitting between the windows.  Nothing peculiar, I guess--except that there were about fifty kids in the room at the same time, some of them my age, some of them as young as six.  I saw Joseph Little Hawk sitting in the very front row, Lila several benches behind him.  Lila spun in her seat and blew me a kiss.  I waved back, confused, smiling.
     
    "Move, please," someone said behind me.
     
    I went into the classroom.  Annie, Aubrey, and Rafael were sitting on a bench toward the back.  Aubrey had all his pencils arranged on the long, wooden table in perfect organization.  I had to wonder what one guy needed with so many pencils.  I scrunched my way into a seat between Aubrey and Rafael.  I dropped my schoolbag below the bench and playfully tousled Aubrey's short hair. 
     
    "Ah, Skylar!" Aubrey said.  He caught his Coke bottle glasses before they flew off his face.  "I was just telling Rafael how nice it is that he and I finally match!"
     
    In the vaguest sense of the word, maybe.  No one would have looked at Aubrey, tall and weedy and bright as a lightbulb, and mistaken him for the darker, skulking Rafael.
     
    Rafael scowled.
     
    "You know...the glasses?  Oh, well, anyway..."
     
    Where were you yesterday? I signed.
     
    Aubrey was Rafael's polar opposite; he had picked up on two hundred or more hand signals over the course of summer vacation.  This was one of those rare occasions when he didn't understand what I was saying.  He peered at me, polite but bemused.  Annie intervened.
     
    "Mr. Takes Flight had to visit the hospital," she filled in.  "It was all very sudden."
     
    I felt my eyes widen.  Oh, no, I thought.  I was surprised I hadn't run into them when Dad took me for immunizations.  Is he okay?
     
    "He's always had a bit of a heart condition," Aubrey said uneasily.  "But he'll be fine.  We checked him out the same day and Mom's monitoring him with hawk eyes."
     
    "I just remembered," Annie said, "I brought back a