Read Online Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo - Free Book Online

Dodge,” said Beverly. She grinned, displaying a chipped front tooth. Raymie wasn’t sure, but she thought that it might be the first time she had seen Beverly Tapinski really, truly smile.
    Louisiana laughed. “We are!” she said. “We are leaving Dodge far behind.”
    From the front seat, the invisible granny laughed.
    And then Raymie was laughing, too.
    Something was happening to her. Her soul was getting bigger and bigger and bigger. She could feel it lifting her off the seat, almost.
    “The trick with people like Marsha Jean,” said Louisiana’s grandmother, “is to be forever wily, to fight back, to never give up or give in.”
    The car went a little faster still.
    Raymie understood that, technically, she should be afraid. She was in a car that was being driven too fast by a person who was invisible. Plus, the car sounded like it might fall apart at any minute.
    But Louisiana was on one side of her — with her bunny barrettes and her sequins and the Florence Nightingale book in her arms; and Beverly was on the other side of her — bruised, grubby-handed, and smelling like some strange combination of motor oil and cotton candy. And there was a gigantic wind blowing into the car, and Raymie’s soul was as big as it had ever been before and she felt not one bit afraid.
    She turned to Beverly and said, “You held Alice Nebbley’s hand.”
    “So what?” said Beverly. She shrugged. She grinned again. “She asked me to.”
    “I am so happy,” said Louisiana. “All of a sudden, I’m just filled up with happiness. Should I sing, Granny?”
    “Of course you should sing, darling,” said her grandmother.
    And so Louisiana started singing “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” in the prettiest voice Raymie had ever heard. It sounded like an angel singing. Not that Raymie had ever heard an angel sing. But still, that was the way it sounded. Raymie listened and looked out the window at the stop signs rushing by.
    For some reason, even though the song wasn’t a sad song, it made Raymie think of sad things. It made her think of the kitchen light in her house, the one over the stove, the one that her mother left on all night long.
    It made her think of how, one time, she had come out to the kitchen in the middle of the night for a drink of water and had seen her father sitting at the table with his head in his hands. He had not seen her. And Raymie had backed up slowly and gone back to bed without saying anything to him.
    What was he doing at the table, alone, with his head in his hands?
    She should have said something to him.
    But she had not.
    Louisiana finished singing, and her grandmother said, “It does my heart good to hear you sing, Louisiana. It makes me believe that all will be well.”
    “All will be well, Granny,” said Louisiana. “I promise you. I’m going to win that contest, and we will be rich as Croesus.”
    “You are the best granddaughter an old woman could hope for. And now will you just look where we are?”
    “Home!” said Louisiana.
    “Yes,” said her grandmother.
    The car slowed down and turned off the paved road and onto a dirt road.
    “We can all have some tuna fish together!” said Louisiana.
    “Oh, boy,” said Beverly.
    And then they were at the end of the dirt road, and a gigantic house was in front of them. The front porch was sagging and the chimney was tilted to one side, as if it were considering something important. Some of the windows were boarded up.
    “Come on,” said Louisiana. “We’re here.”
    “Really?” said Beverly.
    “Yes,” said Louisiana’s grandmother. “We’ve outsmarted Marsha Jean, and we’re home.”

In the kitchen, there were several towering piles of empty tuna-fish cans. The walls were painted green, and for the first time, Raymie stood face-to-face with the grandmother. It was like looking at Louisiana in a fun-house mirror. The grandmother’s hair was gray and her face was wrinkled, but other than that she looked exactly like