The Great Good Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

car.” Y’know, sort of as a hint. But he doesn’t take it that way. At all.
    He stops super-suddenly at the four-way stop near Kleindorf’s Meats—so suddenly that I think he’s gotten an itching to run in and pick up a brisket or something, but no. He turns to me with his tight, white lips and says, “Ivy Green, there’s no ‘best conversation’ to be had here, do you understand? Your mama has gone off after that god­forsaken preacher. She’s left us and her medication behind, and there’s not a darn thing to do about it, at least for a guy who’s got even a shred of pride left. Do you understand?”
    The air in my lungs goes straight up into my throat. “No,” I say. “I don’t understand. I want to know what’s going on! I want you to go find Mama and bring her home!”
    And right then someone behind us beeps to remind uswe’re still at the stop sign, mucking up traffic, so Daddy starts up again and says very quietly—so quietly, I’m not sure I hear him right, “Sometimes you have to wait till a person wants to be found.”

    Each morning as I put up the cereal boxes or the peanut butter in the kitchen cupboard, I look at the pharmacy bag that Donnetta Snow sent home with us the other day. Daddy hasn’t touched it since—it’s just sitting there on the countertop, waiting for Mama to remember herself. Or remember us. Or something.
    I tried one more time when we got home that day, suggesting maybe Daddy could send the pills to Mama if he wasn’t going to go get her personally, and he said, “Ivy-girl, I’m gonna be straight up with you. I do not know where to send them. Your mama didn’t exactly leave behind a good address.” And then he shut his eyes for a second—just a second, like an extra-long blink—and took a deep breath. It’s hard to say if that was the scared dad or the mad dad, breathing like that, but either way, it didn’t seem good.
    I’d been hoping it was just me who didn’t know how or where in heaven’s name to find The Great Good Bible Church of Panhandle Florida. (Well, except for beingpretty sure that it’s in Florida.) But it turns out that Daddy doesn’t know either. Which I take to mean that Mama is actually missing. Or, like Daddy said, not wanting to be found.

    â€œLet’s go back to the jets!” says Devon as I’m putting him into the stroller. I’ve gotten so I can do this part myself so Mrs. Murray doesn’t even have to come out with us in the morning.
    â€œYour mama’s right,” I say to Devon. “You’re a man with a plan.” I start to strap him in, but he takes over and buckles himself. Which I guess is why we really don’t need Mrs. Murray—it’s not me getting more capable. It’s Devon.
    â€œSee planes fly,” says Lucy. She’s like a little mockingbird now that she can talk, constantly copying Devon’s words and ideas.
    But really, her request is not a shock. Pretty much all that Devon and Lucy have wanted to do these last couple of weeks is watch remote control planes fly loop-the-loops in the airspace over East Loomer Park. It never seems to get boring—not for them, and not for me either. We don’t know how they work. Or which way they’re gonna turn next. Or how they can be up in the air, easyas birds, one moment, and thumping along the ground like a dog with a limp the next. But that’s what we like, I think, all three of us. It’s the surprise and mystery of it that makes us want to watch.
    Meanwhile, it turns out that this is where Paul Dobbs usually hangs out too. Which means that I’m spending big chunks of almost every day with one of Loomer’s official certified brainiac science guys.
    I should clarify. We hang out, but we couldn’t be considered real or actual friends, if being friends requires having something