Read Online Outside In by Karen Romano Young - Free Book Online Page A

stuff on the Rankins’ steps and went with him through the two backyards.
    When we got to the Ascontis’ back door, there was yelling inside—Pete’s voice and Uncle Joe’s—so Sandy and I backed away without knocking. He and I had looked at each other, and he’d smiled a little as if the fighting were funny, but maybe it wasn’t, he wasn’t sure. We went away again. I’d liked him better since that day. At least he’d been willing to walk up the steps with me, and we had something in common from walking down them.
    Now Sandy was at the junior high camp. I didn’t know ifhe’d been there other summers. I hadn’t paid attention to what Sandy had done, other summers. Dave had
always
gone to Park and Rec camp. To him and Nathan and Ziggy, it was a chance to play baseball. I left the mothers to their mysterious painting activity (I bet Dave and Pete wondered how Aunt Bonnie got red paint on her) and braved camp. It did take bravery, too, not just on account of being afraid to go out in case someone came and caused me to disappear, but on account of Pete.
    I thought about walking, but then I thought about Wendy Boland. I got on Reshna and flew instead. Down Marvin Road to the corner and then left onto Chauncey Road. It was a mile, up hills and down, to the park. Little twinges of cramps still touched my insides, like a hot thing to be avoided. It was either this or stay home and listen to more no-news news reports about Wendy Boland.
    The first time I met Joanie Buczko was at the bike rack, where she was unloading a stack of white T-shirts from her baskets.
    “Help you?” I offered, because the shirts were falling.
    “Thanks,” she said, handing over a pile of shirts. “Old Frank can handle a big load like this better than I can.”
    We walked toward the picnic tables by the baseball field. I was first-day nervous. “Your bike has a name?”
    Joanie looked at me warily. “Yeah.” She sounded so tough that something told me her mother made her say “yes” the way mine made me say “derrière.”
    “So does mine,” I said. “Reshna.”
    “
Reshna
means?”
    “‘Dragonfly.’”
    “Frank
means ‘free,’” said Joanie.
    Joanie was clean, clean and pink, with dark, curly hair ina tight ponytail and dark, sparking eyes. That’s
sparking.
She went to Bridgefield Junior High, not St. John Vianney’s. So I’d seen her, but I didn’t know her, until now.
    “
My
name’s Joanie,” she said.
    “I’m Chérie,” I said, and she practically gasped.
    “What a good name,” she said.
    Not weird. Not foreign, or French. Good. I felt almost giggly, I liked her so much.
    Joanie and I dumped the shirts on a table, and then she stood talking to an older girl who was standing there. “Take a seat,” the older girl said, waving her hands at the crowd of kids. I looked back to see Joanie still standing there, gabbing. Her Keds were whiter than any I’d ever owned, except for the first five minutes I owned them. My own toes were poking out of my new lime green flip-flops, already sandy and damp from the morning grass and the road. I found a spot at the end of a bench. After a moment a brown-haired girl came and sat on the bench a foot or two away.
    The boys all were sitting on the picnic tables
over there
under the trees, and the girls were meant to stay
over here,
sitting on the picnic bench or the fence railing that separated the picnic area from the baseball field. That was the way it started, but it didn’t stay that way. Joanie squooshed in between me and the girl next to me. “Hey, Rosa,” she said to the girl. “This is Chérie.”
    “Hi,” said Rosa.
    Now there were two people I knew, but Joanie knew everybody.
    At first I thought Joanie Buczko was just an enthusiastic camper, but soon I began to think she was overdoing it a bit. She raised her hand for capture the flag, basket weaving,tie-dyeing, badminton, and sand casting and jumped right off the picnic bench when the head counselor, Micky,