Tallahassee Higgins Read Online Free PDF

lunch and the boys will fall madly in love with you."
    That made me laugh. "Even though I have big teeth and a zillion freckles?"
    I made Melanie nod her head. "That's just what they like in Maryland, I hear. Big teeth and freckles and red hair. And don't forget, you can tell jokes and walk on your hands and turn perfect cartwheels and draw almost anything. Not everybody is as talented as you are, Tallahassee Higgins."
    "But they might think I talk funny. And suppose I don't know how to do their math and stuff?"
    "Well, you just have to stay here for a little while," Melanie said. "Then you'll be in California where the sun always shines and the sky is always blue and the leaves never fall off the trees."
    With that thought to comfort me, I fell asleep.
    ***
    The next morning, after Uncle Dan left for the phone company, Aunt Thelma drove me to school. Normally, she told me, she would be at work before I left the house, but the bank had given her special permission to come in late today. She wanted to make sure I got to school on time.
    "Now pay attention to where I'm going, so you'll know how to get home," Aunt Thelma said as she pulled out of the driveway. "It's only six blocks, and you'll probably meet some other children to walk with."
    "Do any kids my age live near us?" I was watching a girl with long, brown hair walking along behind three younger boys, probably her little brothers. The boys were pushing and shoving each other, quarreling about something, and the girl was doing her best to ignore them. She stared at us as we drove past, and Aunt Thelma waved at her.
    "That's Jane DeFlores and her brothers," she told me. "They live in the house behind us."
    I turned and looked out the rear window at Jane and her brothers, still fighting, as they dwindled away in the distance. "Is she nice?"
    Aunt Thelma nodded. "She's a lovely little girl."
    Before I could ask her any more questions, we pulled up across the street from the Pinkney Magruder Elementary School. It looked like a jail. Dark-red brick, two stories high, little windows, and big, green doors at the top of a flight of cement steps.
    Off to one side the playground swings blew in the wind, their chains making a sad, clanking sound. Kids ran around shouting and yelling. It made my stomach hurt just to think about meeting so many strangers.
    "Did you know your mother went to school here?" Aunt Thelma asked. "And Dan and I, too." She smiled and smoothed her coat. "It seems like yesterday."
    To me it seemed more like a hundred years ago. I simply couldn't imagine Aunt Thelma or Liz walking up these steps, going through the big, green double door into the dreary tile hall, breathing in the smells of spaghetti and hot dogs, floor wax and chalk dust. Frankly, it made me feel as if the building were full of ghosts.
    In the office Aunt Thelma paused at a counter and waited for the secretary to look up from her typewriter.
    "I was here last week registering my niece, Tallahassee Higgins." Aunt Thelma nudged me forward.
    The secretary looked through a pile of papers on her desk. "Oh, yes, you're all taken care of, Tallahassee. You'll be in Mrs. Duffy's class—Six-B in Room 201. I'll buzz somebody to get you."
    "Wait a minute, Tallahassee, I almost forgot." Aunt Thelma opened her purse and pulled out a key on a long chain, the kind you see most often attached to bathtub plugs. "Take this and don't lose it. I'll be home around four-thirty. You can have a couple of cookies and a glass of milk, but I expect you to clean up any mess you make."
    Sticking the key in my pocket, I looked at the floor, too embarrassed to meet her eyes. Did she have to talk to me as if I were a baby while the secretary leaned over the counter listening to every word?
    "Here's Dawn," the secretary said as a girl walked into the office carrying a hall pass. "This is Tallahassee Higgins, honey. Will you show her where Six-B is?"
    Dawn's eyes slid over me, taking in my stiff, new jeans, my big teeth, and my