Raymie Nightingale Read Online Free PDF Page B

talk. She was out of breath from pushing the wheelchair. Isabelle was heavier than she looked.
    “Faster,” said Isabelle.
    “What?” said Raymie.
    “Go faster,” said Isabelle.
    Raymie tried to push the wheelchair faster. She could feel little pinpricks of sweat on her upper lip. Her arms hurt. So did her legs.
    “Take my hand!” shouted a terrible voice from behind one of the closed doors.
    “What was that?” said Raymie. She stopped pushing the wheelchair.
    “What are you doing?” said Isabelle. “Why are you stopping?”
    “Take my hand!” screamed the voice again. Raymie’s heart jumped up high in her chest, and then sank down low.
    “Who is that?” asked Raymie.
    “That’s Alice Nebbley,” said Isabelle. “Ignore her. She knows one sentence, and she says it day and night. The monotony of her request is too horrible to bear.”
    To Raymie, the voice didn’t sound like it belonged to someone named Alice. Instead, it sounded like the voice of a troll who was standing under a bridge hoping that an unsuspecting billy goat would walk by.
    Raymie’s heart was pounding somewhere deep inside of her now. It felt as if it had moved position permanently — from her chest to her stomach. She thought how nice it would be if she were like Beverly Tapinski and afraid of nothing.
    Raymie took a deep breath and started to push the wheelchair again.
    “That’s right,” said Isabelle. “The trick is to keep moving. Never stop moving.”

Isabelle’s room had a single bed in it and a rocking chair and a nightstand with a clock on it. There was an afghan on the rocking chair. The walls were painted white. The clock was ticking very loudly.
    “Should I sit down?” asked Raymie.
    “What do I care?” said Isabelle.
    Raymie sat in the rocking chair, but she held herself very still. It didn’t seem like a good time to rock. “Should I read to you now?” she asked. She held up Florence Nightingale.
    “Do not,” said Isabelle, “read to me from that book.”
    “Okay,” said Raymie. She flexed her toes. She tried to isolate her objectives, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of what to do next. Should she just leave?
    “Take my hand!” shouted Alice Nebbley.
    The voice was not as loud as it had been in the hallway, but it was still loud enough to make Raymie jump.
    “This place,” said Isabelle.
    And then, from far away, there came the sound of music. It was beautiful, sad music. Someone was playing the piano. For some reason, the song made Raymie think of the Flying Elefantes (whoever they were) and their luggage.
    “I can’t stand it,” said Isabelle. She put her head in her hands.
    “Should I go?” asked Raymie.
    Isabelle raised her head and narrowed her eyes. “Can you write?”
    “Write?” said Raymie.
    “Letters,” said Isabelle. “Words. On a piece of paper.” She balled up her fist and pounded it on the arm of the wheelchair. “Can you put words on paper? Oh, the frustration of this world!”
    “Yes,” said Raymie.
    “Good,” said Isabelle. “Get the notepad from the top drawer of the nightstand. And the pen. You write what I say, exactly what I say.”
    Was writing for someone a good deed? It had to be. Raymie got up and retrieved the pen and the notepad. She sat back down.
    “To the management,” said Isabelle.
    Raymie looked at her.
    “Write it,” said Isabelle, pounding her fist on the wheelchair arm again. “Write it, write it.”
    “Take my hand!” shouted Alice Nebbley.
    Raymie bent her head. She wrote,
To the management.
Her hand was shaking.
    “There is entirely too much Chopin played in this establishment,” said Isabelle.
    Raymie looked up.
    “Write that, too,” said Isabelle.
    A long silence prevailed in the room.
    “I don’t know how to spell
Chopin,
” said Raymie finally.
    “What do they teach you in those schools?” asked Isabelle.
    This, Raymie knew, was another impossible, unanswerable adult question. She waited.
    “He was a