Read Online Dust Devil by Rebecca Brandewyne - Free Book Online Page B

using
words like that. Even so, it’s awful hard sometimes, always
being on the outside, looking in.” Sarah’s voice was
wistful, her small face pensive.
    “ Yeah,
I know what you mean. That was one of the reasons why I took up for
you that day at school. I was just sick and tired of the Holbrookes
acting as though they own the town.”
    “ Well,
they do—a lot of it, anyway.”
    “ Maybe
so. But that still doesn’t give them the right to go around
browbeating everybody else, treating us as though we’re dirt
beneath their feet!” A muscle flexed in Renzo’s jaw,
which was taut with anger.
    “ No,
that’s true,” Sarah agreed, sighing. “Daddy always
says you don’t rise higher in life by putting others down. But
I guess there’re a lot of people out there who don’t
understand that, who have to make themselves feel better by looking
down their noses at everybody else. That’s why I come here most
of the time by myself. This meadow’s my favorite place in the
whole wide world. It doesn’t belong to me, of course, or even
to my family. A couple called the Lovells own that beautiful old
white Victorian farmhouse not far from here and all the land around
it, including the meadow. But they’re retired and elderly, and
they don’t have any children of their own, so they said they
didn’t mind if I played here. They even let me have a tree
house here. That’s it up there.” Sarah pointed toward the
branches of the sycamore that formed a canopy above them, where the
tree house nestled snugly, securely, and so secretly amid the leaves
now turned the color of flames with autumn that Renzo hadn’t
noticed it before. “Daddy built it for me last summer, after
the Lovells said he could. It’s my own special hideout. But
you’re welcome to use it whenever you come here, if you want.”
    “ Thanks,
but I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
    “ No,
it’s all right, really. I’d—I’d like for us
to be friends.” Sarah stammered this last in a rush, her heart
thudding anxiously, for fear the boy would laugh at the very idea,
since, although he had been kind and had taken her part in the
quarrel with Evie, too, he was still some years older than she,
nearly a teenager, while she was still just a little girl. “But
I guess you probably think that’s a silly notion... I mean,
with your being in junior high and all, while I’m only in the
second grade.”
    “ No,
I don’t think it’s silly at all. I’m something of a
loner myself, so I don’t have a lot of friends,” Renzo
confessed, touched by her childish offer and thinking of the common
bonds they shared—had shared since the day he had watched the
butterfly come to light in her hands. “Will you show me your
tree house? How do you get up there?”
    “ There’re
ladder rungs—nailed into the other side of the tree. Come on!”
Smiling with happiness and excitement, her eyes shining, Sarah rose,
brushing herself off, then holding out her hand. “There’s
a trapdoor, too, so once I’m up there, I either have to open it
or lower the rope for somebody else to join me. Oh, you’ll see
it all for yourself in a minute. It’s grand! It’s just
like sitting on top of the world! You can see forever, it seems, and
the fields look like a great green-and-gold sea surrounding you.
Sometimes I pretend my tree house is a kingdom on an island and I’m
a fairy-tale princess. You can be my knight in shining armor, if you
like. After all, you did rescue
me that day at school!”
    “ In
that case, I suppose you’d rather I stand down here and wait
while you go up. Then I guess you’ll want me to shout out
something like, ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden
hair!’ so you can lower the rope to admit me into your lofty
kingdom, fairy princess,” Renzo teased, grinning as he spoke
and got to his feet, remembering the fairy tale Madonna had read to
him, along with so many others when he was Sarah’s age.
    “ No,
really, you don’t have to do that if