The Missing Girl Read Online Free PDF

everybody looking down at their plates. Even Fancy shut up for a big minute, but not Stevie.
    Stevie isn’t afraid of anything . She got right into the act and made a big hissy fit. “Listen to Daddy,” she said, only she didn’t say it, she screeched it, the way she does. “Me, I’m sick of the same thing, the same old thing, macaroni, macaroni, all the time!”
    You always get that I’m-going-to-throw-up, sick-in-the-belly feeling when Stevie has a fit and yells at people, which she does about twenty-three times a day, but you can’t help thinking she’s kind of brave, too, and you wish you were more like her. Your secret about yourself is that you’re a huge scaredy cat. You’re scared of so many things, like burglars and lightning and driving across a bridge in a car and going to the dentist, which you didn’t do this year, and it’s one thing, anyway, to be glad about when your family doesn’t have money.
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    Mommy is sort of like Stevie, yelling a lot, but nicer, except when she gets mad. Then she gets really, really mad and throws things, and sometimes it’s funny, like she throws a pot holder or a dish towel, and everybody ducks and tries not to let Mommy see them laughing.
    But this time, when Poppy said that about the food, she threw a pot right across the room, and it crashed into the wall.
    Fancy, who’s your favorite sister, sang out. “Lucky, lucky, lucky it didn’t hit any person body,” and you look at her and sort of smile, because you know nobody will scold her.
    Then Beauty said, “Hey, you all, Daddy’s back is going to get better, right, Daddy? Like your foot last year, after you fell into that woodchuck hole when you went hunting? And then you can work again, and everything will be okay.”
    You could see Daddy’s face sort of cooling off and getting nice again, and he nodded, and you let out a big breath you didn’t even know you’d been holding. After a bit everybody started talking, Mommy even sat down next to you and petted your hair, so you knew she wasn’t mad anymore. And everybody ate their supper and was happy.
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    Except you. Your stomach still hurt, so you asked to be excused, and you went to your room and wrote in your notebook, and then you felt sort of better, but you still didn’t want to eat supper.
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    BEAUTY AND ETHAN: THE MOVIE
    BEAUTY WAS ON her way out of school, hurry-ing to get to her job at the florist shop, when she almost ran into Ethan Boswell, a junior boy she sort of knew from AP World History, who was taking the steps back into school two at a time. He had long legs, and he was on the track team. “Oops, sorry,” she said, and stepped aside. So did he. “Double oops,” she said, and stepped to the other side. So did he. It was one of those stupid moments that were so stupid they were funny.
    Ethan seemed to be holding back a laugh. His nose twitched. Then he dashed around her. That little dance lasted just long enough for Beauty to look closely at 48

    Ethan—he sat way in the back of Mr. Magruder’s class and never said much—and to see that he wasn’t just another tall and skinny guy who could run, but had a bit of dash. He wore two thin silver rings in one ear and a brilliant rose-colored scarf, like a flag marking him out, tied across his forehead. Not the usual Mallory toughboy or jockboy—or any Malloryboy—getup.
    Beauty looked around for her sisters, saw none of them, and kept going, walking fast and wondering why she had never really noticed Ethan Boswell before, when he was so very cute. Her heart rose and sank at the same moment. Yes, yes, it was going to be another crush. She’d been holding out against falling again, falling for a boy, falling into the agonizing, thrilling highs and lows of passion. In some corner of her mind, she had held the thought that not to have a crush was somehow freeing, but walking west on Midler Avenue, she was talking to Ethan.
    Frankly, it was that scarf that captured my heart, that just