Read Online The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau - Free Book Online Page B

look.
    Inside the box were at least a dozen colored pencils—red, green, blue, yellow, purple, orange. They had never even been sharpened; their ends were flat. They had erasers. Lina’s heart gave a few fast beats.
    “How much are they?” she said.
    “Probably too much for you,” the man said.
    “Probably
not,
” said Lina. “I have a job.”
    “Good, good,” the man said, smiling again. “No need to take offense.” He picked up the yellow pencil and twirled it between his fingers. “Each pencil,” he said, “five dollars.”
    Five dollars! For seven, you could buy a coat—it would be an old, patched coat, but still warm. “That’s too much,” Lina said.
    He shrugged and began to put the lid back on the box.
    “But maybe . . .” Lina’s thoughts raced. “Let me look at them again.”
    Once more the man lifted the lid and Lina bent over the pencils. She picked one up. It was painted a deep clear blue, and on its flat top was the blue dot of the lead. The pink eraser was held on by a shiny metal collar. So beautiful! I could buy just one, Lina thought. Then I could save a little more and buy a coat for Granny
next
month.
    “Make up your mind,” said the man. “I have other customers who are interested, if you aren’t.”
    “All right. I’ll take one. No, wait.” It was like hunger, what she felt. It was the same as when her hand sometimes seemed to reach out by itself to grab a piece of food. It was too strong to resist. “I’ll take two,” she said, and a faint, dazzly feeling came over her at the thought of what she was doing.
    “Which two?” the man said.
    There were more colors in that box of pencils than in all of Ember. Ember’s colors were all so much the same—gray buildings, gray streets, black sky; even the colors of people’s clothes were faded from long use into mud green, and rust red, and gray-blue. But these colors—they were as bright as the leaves and flowers in the greenhouse.
    Lina’s hand hovered over the pencils. “The blue one,” she said. “And . . . the yellow one—no, the . . . the . . .”
    The man made an impatient noise in the back of his throat.
    “The green one,” said Lina. “I’ll take the blue and the green.” She lifted them out of the box. She took the money from the pocket of her coat and handed it to the man, and she put the pencils in her pocket. They were hers now; she felt a fierce, defiant joy. She turned to go, and that was when she saw that the baby was no longer in the store.
    “Poppy!” she cried. She whirled around. “Did you see my little sister go out?” she asked the man. “Did you see which way she went?”
    He shrugged. “Didn’t notice,” he said.
    Lina darted into the street and looked in both directions. She saw lots of people, some children, but no Poppy. She stopped an old woman. “Have you seen a little girl, a baby, walking by herself? In a green jacket, with a hood?” The old woman just stared at her with dull eyes and shook her head.
    “Poppy!” Lina called. “Poppy!” Her voice rose to a shout. Such a little baby couldn’t have gone far, she thought. Maybe down toward Greengate Square, where there were more people walking around. She began to run.
    And then the lights flickered, and flickered again, and went out. Darkness slammed up in front of her like a wall. She stumbled, caught herself, and stood still. She could see absolutely nothing.
    Shouts of alarm came from up and down the street, and then silence. Lina stretched her arms out. Was she facing the street or a building? Terror swept through her. I must just stand still, she thought. The lights will come on again in a few seconds, they always do. But she thought of Poppy alone in the blackness, and her legs went weak.
I must find her.
    She took a step. When she didn’t bump into anything, she took another step, and the fingers of her right hand crumpled against something hard. The wall of a building, she thought. Keeping her hand against it, she