Read Online Also Known As Harper by Ann Haywood Leal - Free Book Online Page A

Lee.” Winnie Rae’s coyote eyes zeroed in on my blue notebook on the ground by the pool. “Mrs. Rodriguez is almost to your row.”
    I felt my heart beating in the pit of my stomach when I thought about Mrs. Rodriguez missing my poems.
    â€œI’ll get there when I get there.” I tried to remember Mama’s exact words as she was telling me she needed me to stay home. It had been just this morning, but it already seemed like so long ago. She had to let me go to school tomorrow.
    I stared right through the middle of Winnie Rae’s face, which usually made her back off. “What are you doing hanging around here, anyway?”
    But I could see Winnie Rae wasn’t in a backing-off mood. She took a few steps forward and grabbed hold of the rail on the ladder. “Mama works here. I can be here any time I want.”
    â€œJust because your mama owns our house doesn’t mean she owns the whole county.” My foot was itching to give her a good kick.
    â€œThat’s not your house anymore, Harper Lee Morgan.” I could tell Winnie Rae enjoyed reminding me about that. “Your daddy owes us so much money, Mama says he could’ve bought and sold the place a few times over.”
    I thought about Daddy and how our house must’ve looked to him if he’d happened to turn in his seat as he drove away. I imagined our house getting smaller and smaller in the rear window of his pickup, and all of a sudden it was him I was mad at, and not Winnie Rae Early. Plenty of mad was swirling around my face right about then; maybe even enough to make Winnie Rae go on back the way she’d come in.
    But Winnie Rae had a long stubborn streak to her, and her feet stayed planted where they were.
    I looked over at the other end of the pool. Everyone was climbing out. Winnie Rae sure knew how to spoil a good time.
    Lorraine snatched her towel from the ground and wrapped it around her shoulders. Her eyes said what her words didn’t need to.
    â€œI know what you mean, Lorraine.” I pressed my lips together and willed my arms to stay at my sides and my feet to stop getting ready to give Winnie Rae Early a good sharp kick. “The other end of this pool has developed a stink to it.”
    We gathered up our things and made our way back toward the blackberry bushes. Lorraine was good at ignoring people and keeping her temper. She looked right through Winnie Rae, as if she was the missing part of the pool slide.
    Winnie Rae gave Lorraine and me her double snake-eye look, where she lets her meanness settle back and simmer for later. And she took off ahead of us, through the bushes, without another word.
    I turned to Lorraine. “I hope she caught a good handful of extra-prickly stickers on the way out.”
    Lorraine smiled.
    When we got down the path a ways, Lorrainestopped to tie up her sneakers and motioned for me to go on.
    Randall ran to catch up with me. He glanced back at Lorraine and stared me down hard. “She’s not retarded, you know.”
    â€œI know that, Randall,” I said. “I’d have known that even if you hadn’t told me yourself.”
    He lowered his voice. “She stopped talking right after the fire. It started in her room. In the wires in the wall. She wouldn’t move.” He made his own legs go stiff and straight. “The firefighter had to carry her out the window.”
    â€œThey carry you out, too?” Hemingway looked interested, but not scared.
    Thinking about Lorraine all frozen and still with the fire in her wall like that made the skin on my arms get prickly.
    Randall shook his head. “I wasn’t home. I had a sleepover at my cousin’s.”
    Lorraine’s arms were straight and tight at her sides when she caught up with us, and I knew she’d heard.
    â€œYou want to come over for a while, Hemingway?” Randall rubbed the end of his towel over the top of his head.
    Hem started to say yes, but I