The Water and the Wild Read Online Free PDF Page B

better than puking all over Eliot’s green sneakers.
    Lottie counted to one—two—three, then leapt up, sprang from the coats, and pushed out through the break room door. She ran, ignoring a shout from behind her.Out in the pub, the injured boy’s screams were swallowed up in the blare of the baseball game and the yells of drunken men. She burst out the front door and into the blisteringly cold rain. It was still three blocks to Thirsby Square. Lottie looked at her wristwatch, which she was relieved to find had survived the accident. It was past eight o’clock, her curfew, and Mrs. Yates would be irate if she found Lottie’s bedroom empty.
    Lottie passed under a maple tree and shivered. To be so close to death, and for someone to pull her out of the way! Now that Lottie had time to think about it, this was the only explanation for why she hadn’t been smushed in Skelderidge Park: someone must have yanked her away from that falling tree. Then, that someone had just—disappeared. Lottie tugged up the sleeve of her periwinkle coat and looked again at the handprint on her arm. The sting had gone away, but just looking at the mark, she felt sick. Lottie decided that she was never going to wander into a pub ever again. She felt worse now than she had when she had first gone inside.
    Lottie opened the wrought iron gate of the boardinghouse at Thirsby Square. But she didn’t go inside. Not yet. Instead, Lottie crawled under the shelter of hergreen apple tree. She ran her fingers lovingly down its sturdy trunk, then stooped at its roots. The ground was runny with mud, and Lottie’s fingers went slick as she dug up her copper box. She sat down on the root notch and opened the lid, though only by a crack, so as to shield the box’s contents from the rain. She breathed deeply, and quite suddenly the cold and the rain couldn’t reach her at all. When Lottie opened her copper box, the world outside—with its Pen Bloomfields and Mrs. Yateses and incurable illnesses and falling trees—bled away like watercolors under the tap.
    When her box was open, Lottie could pretend that it was the magic of the letter-writer that was real, not the rules at Kemble School.
    Lottie peered inside at the worn photograph of her parents, and her heart squeezed up her breath in a painful hitch. Unbidden, Mr. Kidd’s recitation from English class winked in her mind:
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
    â€œCHARLOTTE!”
    Lottie slammed her box shut and whipped around. Mrs. Yates stood on the front porch, her arms folded.
    â€œWhat
are
you doing? Get in this house at once!”
    Lottie shoved her copper box back beneath the tree root. She tripped up the front porch, face burning. Mrs. Yates would ground her for this. She would keep her inside for the weekend. She wouldn’t let Lottie visit the Barmy Badger, not even to apologize to Eliot.
    â€œI—I—” Lottie began.
    But Mrs. Yates held up a hand to silence her. “You’re grounded.”
    â€œI’m wet,” Lottie replied stupidly.
    Looking over Mrs. Yates’ shoulder, Lottie noticed that they were not alone. A man dressed in a fancy pinstriped suit was sitting in the parlor.
    â€œThis is Mr. Grissom, Charlotte,” said Mrs. Yates, waving Lottie into the parlor. “He’s that nice prospective boarder for our third floor that I was telling you about.”
    The only thing that Lottie could remember Mrs. Yates telling her about a prospective boarder had been that morning, when she’d warned Lottie to stay out of sight. There was no chance of that now, though, as Lottie was as in sight as she could possibly be.
    â€œHello,” the man said, inclining his head toward Lottie. “You must be the little lady of the house.”
    Lottie frowned. She did not like the way that the man looked at her, as though she were five years younger than she really