Read Online All the Way Home by Patricia Reilly Giff - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Patricia Reilly Giff
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it, then turned the last corner and went up the library steps, holding on to the railing, slick with rain.
A memory.
The green lace curtain clutched in her hand. Someone had tossed a piece of candy to her. But her head felt as if it had been stuffed with something thick and damp
like rolls of cotton. So she didn’t reach out and the candy fell in an arc down and down.…
Inside, the library was cool and dim, the squares of windows streaming with rain. In the center of the bulletin board was a picture of two kids smiling, and a sign: FRIENDS GO BACK TO SCHOOL .
Mariel ran a finger over the words. She had a friend for the first time in her life. She practiced saying it in her head.
Friend. My friend
.
No one would ever know about it. By this afternoon he’d be gone.
She’d know, she told herself, she’d know forever.
She skittered past the desk. The librarian’s head was bent. She didn’t even look up to see a girl out of school.
Mariel went down the long aisle filled with books on both sides. She knew the library, the children’s section, the adults’. She had spent years here.
Everyone out playing. Mariel has germs
.
On Saturday afternoons, she had looked at the books of world maps with their strange names: Ceylon, Singapore, Burma. And the maroon one of her own country, a page for each state: Maryland, Montana, Nebraska. She had flipped through, getting closer to her state all the time.
And there it was, the triangle of New York.
Windy Hill was just a small dot on the top. The first time she had looked it up, it had taken forever to run her fingers from one corner to the other. And when she finally spotted it, she had shivered. It was almost as if shewere there in Good Samaritan Hospital, and back even farther, somewhere with the green lace curtains trembling in the breeze.
She had picked up a pencil that she found on the table and drawn a line under Windy Hill, a line so faint that no one would see it, but she’d know it was there.
“I hope you’re not marking up that book,” the librarian had said that day, standing in back of her suddenly, sounding disappointed.
Mariel had erased the line, but there was still the tiniest smudge so she could always find it.
The book was waiting for her now, ready to show her how Brick would get home.
She peered around the library stacks, making sure the librarian was still too busy to wonder why a girl was at the library instead of in a classroom. Then she reached for the book.
It didn’t take her long to realize that Brick wasn’t going home. Not today, and not soon, certainly not soon enough to help his friend Claude harvest apples.
Her disappointment for him was so great she could feel it in her throat and in her chest. She pored over the map book with its spidery lines, counting off the miles in her head and then on a piece of paper that she found on the table. More than two hundred. Certainly more.
She traced it with her finger. Over a bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Another bridge. Then up, and a zigzag and farther up, following the Delaware River.
It wasn’t a place you could walk to easily. If youwalked even ten miles a day … could a person walk that far? she wondered … it would take almost a month.
And where would he sleep?
Where would he find something to eat?
And by the time he reached Windy Hill, a place much colder than Brooklyn, wouldn’t the apples be frozen?
She thought of Brick’s face, the freckles, the brown eyes, the thick red hair falling over his forehead. How could she tell him? How could she ever say he couldn’t go home?
She wrote it down carefully, the names of the lines, the bridges, the zigzags, even though she knew it was useless. Then she shut the map book in front of her and pushed back her chair.
Somehow she had to tell him.
16
Brick
H e hated to leave that spot near that small bushy tree. He wished he knew what the tree was called. He reached up, pulled off a leaf washed by the rain, and put it in his
A memory.
The green lace curtain clutched in her hand. Someone had tossed a piece of candy to her. But her head felt as if it had been stuffed with something thick and damp
like rolls of cotton. So she didn’t reach out and the candy fell in an arc down and down.…
Inside, the library was cool and dim, the squares of windows streaming with rain. In the center of the bulletin board was a picture of two kids smiling, and a sign: FRIENDS GO BACK TO SCHOOL .
Mariel ran a finger over the words. She had a friend for the first time in her life. She practiced saying it in her head.
Friend. My friend
.
No one would ever know about it. By this afternoon he’d be gone.
She’d know, she told herself, she’d know forever.
She skittered past the desk. The librarian’s head was bent. She didn’t even look up to see a girl out of school.
Mariel went down the long aisle filled with books on both sides. She knew the library, the children’s section, the adults’. She had spent years here.
Everyone out playing. Mariel has germs
.
On Saturday afternoons, she had looked at the books of world maps with their strange names: Ceylon, Singapore, Burma. And the maroon one of her own country, a page for each state: Maryland, Montana, Nebraska. She had flipped through, getting closer to her state all the time.
And there it was, the triangle of New York.
Windy Hill was just a small dot on the top. The first time she had looked it up, it had taken forever to run her fingers from one corner to the other. And when she finally spotted it, she had shivered. It was almost as if shewere there in Good Samaritan Hospital, and back even farther, somewhere with the green lace curtains trembling in the breeze.
She had picked up a pencil that she found on the table and drawn a line under Windy Hill, a line so faint that no one would see it, but she’d know it was there.
“I hope you’re not marking up that book,” the librarian had said that day, standing in back of her suddenly, sounding disappointed.
Mariel had erased the line, but there was still the tiniest smudge so she could always find it.
The book was waiting for her now, ready to show her how Brick would get home.
She peered around the library stacks, making sure the librarian was still too busy to wonder why a girl was at the library instead of in a classroom. Then she reached for the book.
It didn’t take her long to realize that Brick wasn’t going home. Not today, and not soon, certainly not soon enough to help his friend Claude harvest apples.
Her disappointment for him was so great she could feel it in her throat and in her chest. She pored over the map book with its spidery lines, counting off the miles in her head and then on a piece of paper that she found on the table. More than two hundred. Certainly more.
She traced it with her finger. Over a bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Another bridge. Then up, and a zigzag and farther up, following the Delaware River.
It wasn’t a place you could walk to easily. If youwalked even ten miles a day … could a person walk that far? she wondered … it would take almost a month.
And where would he sleep?
Where would he find something to eat?
And by the time he reached Windy Hill, a place much colder than Brooklyn, wouldn’t the apples be frozen?
She thought of Brick’s face, the freckles, the brown eyes, the thick red hair falling over his forehead. How could she tell him? How could she ever say he couldn’t go home?
She wrote it down carefully, the names of the lines, the bridges, the zigzags, even though she knew it was useless. Then she shut the map book in front of her and pushed back her chair.
Somehow she had to tell him.
16
Brick
H e hated to leave that spot near that small bushy tree. He wished he knew what the tree was called. He reached up, pulled off a leaf washed by the rain, and put it in his
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