Tumbleweeds Read Online Free PDF Page A

else’s except for the blurred figure of another boy two seats over.
    Miss Whitby recovered and came forward with a strained smile. She was very pretty and looked too young to teach. “You must be Catherine Ann Benson. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow. Thank you, Mr. Favor. I’ll take over from here.”
    Mr. Favor spoke in an undertone from behind his hand, “As I hope you will your students, Miss Whitby, and I told you she’d be here
today
.” He dropped his hand and addressed the class. “Boys and girls, this is Catherine Ann Benson, Miss Emma’s granddaughter. She’s from California. I don’t want to hear of anybody not being nice to her, understand?” He ran a stern eye around the room. “You know what’ll happen if you do.” To Cathy he said, “Don’t hesitate to call me if you need me, Catherine Ann.”
    Cathy. My name is Cathy!
she wanted to cry, feeling her insides dissolve in embarrassment at her introduction. The principal had
threatened
the students and now, on top of everything else different about her, they would hate her for that reason alone.
    She dropped her eyes to escape their stares and heard a voice call from the back of the room, “Let her sit here, Miss Whitby.” Cathy sneaked a peek from under her lashes and saw that the command had come from the handsome boy in the last row. He was pointing to a desk between him and the other tall boy. There were giggles and girls covered their mouths with their hands, but the speaker did not laugh. Perfectly serious, he dragged his book satchel out of the aisle as if expecting to be obeyed.
    “All right, Trey Don,” Miss Whitby said after a pause. “We’ll try it for a little while. Catherine Ann, you may take your seat.”
    In the complete silence, Cathy walked down the aisle and slipped into the desk seat, conscious of every eye following her, curiosity mixed with surprise and excitement. Rigidly she focused her gaze on unzipping a compartment of her satchel to withdraw paper and pen to write down the material from the board. Her movements held the fascinated attention of the class, as if they were expecting her to perform tricks.
    The boy named Trey Don Hall—now revealed as the nephew of her grandmother’s best friend—leaned over. “Hi. I’m Trey Hall. I’m supposed to look after you. Me and John. That’s John Caldwell over there.”
    She turned to the other boy and blinked shyly.
Hello.
    “Hi,” he said, and smiled at her.
    They were different from any other boys she’d ever known. There was nothing nerdy about them. She thought they may have been held back a year, they were so tall for the sixth grade. It would be hard to say who was handsomer. Both had brown eyes and dark hair, though John’s was a little curlier. They were big and strong compared to her, and she felt even smaller sitting between them.
    The boy named John said, “You can put your pen and paper away. There’s nothing to write down in here. This is a goof-off period.” He noticed the staring students and irritably waved at them with the backs of his hands as if he were shooing chickens. Immediately, in one movement, every set of shoulders rotated to the front.
    Indeed she was sitting between the definite leaders of the sixth grade. Trey Hall leaned over again. “You can call me TD. Everybody does.”
    She glanced at him, wanting to speak but held silent by the familiar powerlessness of her tongue.
    The boy on the other side of her whispered to him across her desk, “She’s mute, TD. Remember?”
    Cathy turned to stare at him in shock.
Mute? She wasn’t mute!
    “Oh, sorry. I forgot,” Trey said. He smiled at her. “
TD
stands for ‘touchdown.’ ”
    She must make them understand that she could speak. She faced the other boy, but he misunderstood the anguish in her eyes and explained, “Like in football. Trey is our team’s quarterback.”
    “Do you like football?” Trey asked.
    She swung her gaze back to him blankly.
Football?
Her father