The Penderwicks on Gardam Street Read Online Free PDF Page B

clock. She had to come up with four more minutes of positivity.
    Then she got it. This past summer at Arundel. Now, those would be positive thoughts. She leaned back against the bed, and away she went, into the Arundel woods and gardens—two-on-one slaughter with Jeffrey and Jane, shooting arrows at pictures of Dexter, climbing out of Jeffrey’s window and into that huge tree, then getting rescued from the huge tree by Cagney, and on and on she thought, and was quite proud of herself, for the next time she looked at the clock, she’d managed to have the entire five minutes of positive thoughts, and so efficiently that there was time left before she had to suit up. She could give herself a treat, and knew exactly what treat she wanted—to try out her new binoculars by the light of day.
    A moment later, with her binoculars slung around her neck, Skye climbed out through her bedroom window and onto the garage roof. This was her special place. It was also sort of a secret place, meaning that though all her sisters knew she came out here, her father didn’t. Neither did Aunt Claire or any of the babysitters who’d taken care of the Penderwicks over the years. Skye knew that adults wouldn’t approve of sitting on roofs, even roofs only one story up, so she hadn’t told any of them. And her sisters hadn’t told on her. Penderwicks didn’t do that to each other.
    She settled on the shingles, raised the binoculars, and focused them. Wow. They were truly great binoculars. With them she could see details all up and down Gardam Street. There at one end of the street were the ivy leaves painted on the Corkhills’ mailbox, and there at the other end a license plate—NTRPRS—on a green car parked in the cul-de-sac.
    “Double wow. Triple wow,” she said, and pointed the binoculars directly across the street at the Geigers’ house.
    The Geigers—Mr. and Mrs. Geiger, Nick, and Tommy—had lived in that house for as long as the Penderwicks had lived in theirs, and Skye had looked at it a million times, but she’d never seen it through binoculars before. There, suddenly so close Skye almost reached out to touch it, was the scar on the garage door where Tommy had crashed his bike three years ago. And the soccer ball Jane had kicked onto the roof—she could read J. L. PENDERWICK THIS IS MY BALL—was still resting precariously in the gutter. And there was the rhododendron Nick had backed the car over when he was first learning to drive last year. Mrs. Geiger had been doing her best to nurse that bush back to health, but it didn’t look like it was going to make it.
    Now here came someone rounding the corner of the house at top speed—Tommy, wearing shoulder pads and his football helmet. Skye tried to focus the binoculars on him, but he was gone around the house again before she could, his long legs and arms flailing at top speed. Training. He was always in training. Running. Lifting weights. Doing drills. Rosalind said that if he had as much discipline with his schoolwork as he did with football, he’d be at the top of the seventh grade. Here he came again.
    “Skye, five minutes until we have to suit up for the game.” It was Jane, leaning out the window. “Annihilation and humiliation for Cameron Hardware. How did your positive thoughts go?”
    “Good. Now go away, I’m still being alone.”
    Skye looked across the street again. Tommy was nowhere in sight, and though she waited for a few minutes, he didn’t reappear. He was probably doing squat thrusts somewhere. Tommy loved squat thrusts.
    She pointed her binoculars up into the sky, for she’d heard a flock of Canada geese honking their way across Cameron. There they were—she focused—
    “Hey.”
    What was the good of a special secret place if everyone kept visiting her there? This time it was Tommy, not doing squat thrusts after all, but instead perched in the tree that grew behind the garage. He was still wearing his helmet. It looked pretty goofy in a