Tiny Dancer Read Online Free PDF

of hot rolls. She hated kitchen work and often shirked her duties. The grin on her face was one of pride, like she was bursting with satisfaction. Around her neck hung a heavy ornate cross tied through with a purple ribbon. My eye was drawn to the woman’s dark hand on her shoulder. 
    I heard Vesta coming up the stairs so I shoved the picture back and dropped the box into the larger carton, folding down the cardboard to hide the contents. I would put it away in the attic later.
    Then I set to work cleaning up the upstairs. I picked up a dirty towel dropped outside the bathroom door. Vesta’s housekeeping had fallen off these past twelve months.
    Thunder snarled above the town, but even the storm could not muffle Daddy and Vesta’s argument brewing down the hall.
    Daddy had promised me we would all get up early and reserve a spot on Main to watch the Peach Festival parade. The Philco radio squawked out the voice of local disc jockey Art Barkley announcing the parade was cancelled entirely.
    The rain let go, plummeting thousands of miles from the sky to tumble onto our roof as if our house was an aquarium that needed refilling.
    I dropped onto my bed. Summer was supposed to be a wide-open sky of possibilities. The sky over Bitterwood Park had put out a “closed for business” sign.
    I tired of eavesdropping , of hoping Daddy would stand up for me and insist I join the Johnsons Tuesday. I closed and locked my door and dropped on the bed, fixing my eyes on the sunflower garden, the only patch of ground happy about the rain
                                                                           * * * * *
    Billy Thornton had taught Siobhan and me how to dance from the time we were barely able to complain about our Saturdays all swallowed up in competitions. If it had not been for being under Billy’s tutelage, I might have tried to quit much sooner. But I knew the truth, that I would have climbed the State Capitol for Billy Thornton if it would please him. Siobhan had quit many times, her begging ignored by Vesta.
    Billy was supposed to leave town with his friends for Wilmington to stay along the island on one of the quaint hotels on Wrightsville Beach. They’d planned it since March. I had overheard their whole plan when I had ridden my bike to the village drugstore to get Vesta her sleeping medicine two Thursdays earlier. There I found him and his buddies gathered at the soda fountain. He was explaining how college students from the university often gathered at the ocean every summer. I eavesdropped through a display of OJ’s Beauty Lotion. Their plan was to meet Billy’s college-bound friends at a beach bar called Neptune’s. The trip’s purpose, most of the students told their folks, was to visit the UNC Wilmington campus. Billy promised his friends a local band would be playing at Neptune’s and his coastal friends could save them a spot on the beach that night for a crab boil.
    It did not take long to conclude that Billy would not be far from Wrightsville Beach the same week as the Johnsons. Overplaying my hand with my already angry stepmother would only make her more indignant and stubborn. Instead of knocking on Daddy and Vesta’s door with the two of them in a state of upheaval, I vowed I wouldn’t disturb them the rest of the day. I busied myself straightening my bathroom and washing my hair. Before I slipped into my bedroom  Vesta stepped out into the hall. She was nearly in her room when she said, “Stop rolling up your shorts like that, Flannery. It’s indecent.”
    “ Yes’m,” I said, rolling down my shorts. I towel-dried my curly red hair, and then holed up in my bedroom, opening my rear window fully. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Siobhan and those bread rolls. Who was she with? The curious picture of Siobhan gave me pause. I reasoned the notion away. Maybe the woman standing behind her was a domestic from one of her little