The Luckiest Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

blossoms, too!” she exclaimed when she had discovered the source of the fragrance. Real lemons growing in the garden!
    Everyone laughed. “Haven’t you ever seen lemons before?” asked Katie.
    â€œNot growing,” answered Shelley. “Why, there are green lemons and ripe lemons and blossoms on the tree all at the same time!” Nature in California must be in a state of utter confusion to produce such a tree as this.
    While the others were discussing lemons, Katie left the table and walked across the yard to a tree with a gnarled trunk and slender gray foliage. She picked something, which she laid on the table in front of Shelley. “We have olives growing in the yard, too,” she said.
    â€œFresh olives right off the tree!” marveled Shelley. How kind of Katie to offer her one. “I simply adore olives.”
    â€œOh, Shelley—” began Mavis.
    It was too late. Shelley bit eagerly into the olive. The taste was so bitter and so terrible that she could not believe it. She sat shocked, not knowing what to do.
    Katie went into a fit of giggles.
    â€œOh, Shelley, I am so sorry,” said Mavis. “I tried to warn you.”
    Shelley swallowed and gulped from her water glass while Katie continued to giggle.
    Then Tom spoke. “Katie, that was not a nice thing to do. I think you should apologize to Shelley.”
    Katie tried to look repentant but did not succeed.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said, giggling, “but you looked so surprised when you bit into the olive.”
    Shelley was so embarrassed she did not know how to answer. Apparently Katie had made her the victim of a practical joke. And just when she was beginning to feel at ease, too.
    â€œAll olives are bitter until they have been cured,” Tom explained. “Katie was counting on your not knowing that.”
    â€œShe certainly caught me,” said Shelley, managing to smile to show she was a good sport, even though she did not feel like one. If this was part of Katie’s difficult age, she did not like to think what the rest of the winter could be like. “It tasted so awful I don’t see how anyone ever thought of eating them in the first place.”
    â€œYou know, that is exactly what I have alwayswondered,” said Katie, smiling warmly at Shelley for the first time, as if now they had something in common. “Well, I guess I had better go do my practicing.”
    â€œMother, she’s just trying to get out of the dishes,” protested Luke. “She always gets out of the dishes.”
    â€œI have to practice, don’t I?” asked Katie virtuously as she rose from the table.
    â€œYes, you do,” agreed Mavis, “but that doesn’t mean you get out of the dishes.”
    Katie heaved a sigh that showed she was exhausted, abused, and misunderstood by her family. Then she disappeared into the house, and chords crashed out of the piano in the living room.
    When Katie settled down to play, Shelley thought she played surprisingly well for a girl of thirteen. The music she recognized as Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody , but while she listened, the rhapsody turned suddenly and logically into Pop Goes the Weasel .
    â€œKatie!” yelled Tom in a voice that would have carried across a gymnasium full of shouting boys.
    The music stopped. “But Daddy,” protested Katie. “It fits there. See, the music goes like this”—she demonstrated with a few notes—“andthen it just naturally wants to turn into Pop Goes the Weasel . Like this.”
    â€œYou stick to the notes as they are written,” ordered Tom.
    Mavis sighed. “She has talent, but she simply doesn’t care.”
    Katie finished playing Pop Goes the Weasel . The rest of the family continued to sit under the pergola while darkness fell.
    Shelley peered at her watch. “It is getting dark awfully early,” she observed.
    â€œThat’s because you