The Secret Hum of a Daisy Read Online Free PDF

her, or my talent for making the perfect bowl of popcorn. Since she was the reason we did things like eat blue lollipops and stick out our tongues at old Mr. Villanueva next door, who’d laugh like he’d been tickled, or climb the tree in the backyard in protest of lima beans, I figured we were a good balance for each other.
    â€œYou worry too much,” she’d always said, putting her finger right between my eyebrows where I had a permanent crease. Mama said I’d been born pensive, which I had to look up. It meant I was always thinking deeply. Which was true. I liked thinking things through. All the way through from start to finish. Sometimes I even wrote down all the possibilities in these little bubble maps like we learned to do with essays. Doing that made me feel safe from pesky surprises. I figured one of us had to be this way since Mama was always flying off. Since it was just the two of us, that left me.
    But along with Mama, Lacey made me see there was more to living than trying to feel safe all the time. Didn’t mean I could do it. But I’d tried to think less. To plan less. To just let myself be in the tree protesting lima beans and not thinking about all the ways I might fall out of the tree or how Mama might be upset.
    She was the first best friend I’d ever had. There’d never been anyone like her.
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    Lacey sat down on the flower-garden sofa and looked around. “I knew you were stubborn, Grace. But jeez.”
    â€œI’m not being stubborn.”
    â€œShe said stubbornly,” Lacey said, smiling.
    I stoked the fire, dumped out water from the bucket, and gave her a
humph.
“It’s all part of Plan B.”
    â€œDon’t you get scared at night?” she said.
    â€œNope,” I lied.
    Lacey picked at a thread on the sofa and, when she saw me watching, stopped. “I just don’t understand why you can’t work your plan from inside the house. You don’t have to make yourself miserable too.”
    â€œThis is torture for Grandma,” I said. What I didn’t tell her was that I could hear the river from the house sometimes. The hills and valleys made the sound carry in funny ways, though, so I couldn’t hear it from the shed at all, even though I could see Grandma’s house through the trees.
    â€œI miss you,” Lacey said. “It takes me even longer to get dressed in the morning because you’re not there to tell me I look okay. I had three tardies in first period just last week.”
    â€œI’ll be there soon. Your mom knows I’m the only one who can talk sense to you when you’re in a snit. And it’s going to get worse now that we’re almost teenagers.” I smiled and poked her arm.
    There was a knock on the door and Mrs. Greene came in, the door scraping against the concrete floor. She took in the dish towel curtains I’d hung in the window and the sleeping bag on the flower-garden sofa. “It seems your grandma is not the one forcing you to live in a broken-down shed. That it is you, in fact, who refuses to come in the house.”
    â€œI might have exaggerated,” I said.
    â€œYou flat-out lied, Grace. And what is with your hair? Is that makeup under your eyes?”
    She came at me with her thumbs and wiped away the eye shadow. Then she nudged herself right between me and Lacey. “We had a deal,” she said to me.
    â€œI’m trying.”
    â€œTrying to give your poor grandmother a stroke.”
    â€œI just want to come back to your house.”
    Mrs. Greene gave me a fierce hug. “We will always be here for you, but this is your home now.”
    I mumbled into her shirt, “You aren’t taking me with you.”
    She took me by the shoulders. “I would never leave you in a bad place. Can you believe that?”
    I looked into Mrs. Greene’s face, trying hard not to believe her. Trying hard to ignore all the days