Until I Find Julian

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Book: Until I Find Julian Read Online Free PDF
Author: Patricia Reilly Giff
showing paler gray underneath; the front steps list to one side. And the square bit of grass in front is brown in spots. But it isn’t that. Maybe it’s the windows with the faded curtains that hide the inside from the street.
    I shiver. Who’d want to live here?
    I think of our house, the stray cat curious, her sharp claws reaching through the cracks in the boards, the sun drawing square patterns of light across the bedroom floor and the kitchen wall.
    Please let Julian still be here in this terrible house, waiting for me.
    I dream about what could happen next. I’d bang hard on the door. As he pulled it open, he’d mutter, “Who’s making all that noise?” and I’d be standing there.
    Angel taps my shoulder with her fingers. “I guess I’ll leave you here.”
    In the middle of nowhere?
    “So long, Matty.” She takes a few steps away. She doesn’t look like her usual take-charge-of-the-world self.
    “Where are you going?”
    She raises one bony shoulder. “Anywhere.” She keeps going, walking faster, swinging her arms, as if she’s forgotten all about me.
    “Angel?” My voice is loud, almost as bossy as hers.
    She doesn’t turn, but she stops, her hands on her hips, her sharp elbows out like a pair of triangles.
    “Want to hang out for a while?”
    She doesn’t answer.
    “Help me find my brother?”
    “You can’t do that alone?”
    I open my mouth, ready to say
get lost,
but her voice sounds strange, garbled, almost as if she’s trying to hold back tears. She’s all alone. Maybe she needs a friend. Maybe that’s why she was so willing to help me.
    “I guess I can’t,” I make myself say.
    “All right, then.” She walks toward me, sneaker laces flapping. “I’ll stay, but only for a couple of days. I have a bunch of things to do. Do you think I can waste my whole life with you?”
    “No,” I say. I see she’s trying not to smile. I see how happy she is. So I’m right about her being lonely. And then I remember hearing her whisper a name in the truck. What was it? Dario? Desiderio? “Who’s…Danilo?” I ask.
    “How should I know?” She wipes her hands on the sides of her jeans. “Let’s go,” she says, back to her bossy self. “Do you want to stand here forever?”
    I take a breath and go up the cracked cement path to the middle house. The bell is broken. I knock a few times, then turn the handle, but the door doesn’t budge; it’s locked, of course. I listen, but inside, everything is still. I stand on tiptoes to peer through the window on top.
    The living room, if that’s what it is, is almost empty: no rug, no chairs; only a couch, a table full of scratches, and a TV.
    A TV! We don’t have one at home. We don’t have an iPhone or an iPad, or any of those things I hear about in school.
    “Someday,” Mami said, sighing.
    Angel doesn’t wait for me. “We’ll go around the back,” she calls over her shoulder. She cuts across the weedy lawn and disappears along the side of the house.
    She’s impossible.
    I follow her, though. What else is there to do?
    There’s one backyard for all the houses. It’s filled with junk: an old tire, pieces of wood, a table turned upside down. Four brightly colored wooden birdhouses hang from a tree. They match the birdhouses that hang over our door. Julian!
    I circle around to the steps and glance up to see a fuzz of green trees in the distance.
    Angel is in the kitchen, her hand on the faucet; rusty water runs in the sink. She shrugs. “The door wasn’t even locked.”
    She motions to me, still on the step. “Move it, Matty. We don’t want the whole world to see we’ve broken in.”
    I shake my head. “We didn’t break in,” I say as I go inside. “It’s Julian’s place.”
Was
Julian’s place? “Besides, it was your idea, Angel.”
    The water runs clear in the sink now, and Angel takes a sip.
    How strange. There’s nothing in this kitchen of Julian’s that I recognize. “Almost empty,” I whisper. There’s a smell of
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