Read Online The Lesson by Suzanne Woods Fisher - Free Book Online Page A

doing fine. I’m going to school, too.
    She chewed on her lip, thinking. Should she have added this last part?
Probably nobody told you, but Old Deborah passed. I thought you should know. Here is four dollars that I saved up. I’ll try to send more. Don’t worry about us.
Love, Jenny
    She had wanted to write more. She had wanted to let her mother know that she and Chris were living in Stoney Ridge, that Chris was fixing up their grandfather’s old house and planned to start a horse breeding business. Chris had been adamant that their mother not be told where they were. He would be furious if he knew she was writing to her mom. But she felt like a traitor if she didn’t. Her mom may not be much of a mother, but she was the only mother Jenny had.
    She licked the envelope, put on a stamp, opened the mailbox, and let the letter slide down its big blue throat.

    Men! So frustrating.
    M.K. was chased away from the crime scene area by the sheriff before she had time to uncover a single clue. Sheriff Hoffman took his sense of duty to ridiculous limits, she thought. He had a gun in his holster on his belt that he liked to pat, to remind her it was there, at the ready. How was shesupposed to know that no trespassing included the first witness on the scene?
    Sheriff Hoffman had glared at her. “You stay out of this pasture, Mary Kate Lapp. We got your statement. We’ll come to you if we have any more questions. And we won’t. You only heard a shot. That’s all. That’s nothing we don’t know. This yellow tape here is meant to keep out riffraff. All riffraff.”
    Riffraff?! She was not riffraff. How insulting. Clearly, the police had no new information. If only they would have let her search the pasture. She was sure she would find a clue to the poor sheep farmer’s untimely demise.
    M.K. walked over to her red scooter and picked it up. How could she solve this crime when she wasn’t even allowed near the crime scene? During school today, when she had the children reading quietly at their desks, she pulled out the most recent issue of her Crime Solving magazine. She read about how often a simple footprint could lead a clever sleuth to the perpetrator.
    The only footprints she could find, besides those of the dead farmer’s, were hoofprints that belonged to sheep. And it was then that Sheriff Hoffman happened to pass by in his patrol car and turned on his noisy siren.
    So frustrating!
    Maybe she would have to come back after dark, with her father’s big flashlight.
    She hopped on her scooter and started down the road, deep in thought. She built up speed to crest the hill. Just as she reached the rise, she crouched down on the scooter to improve aerodynamics. She had read about aerodynamics in a book from the library. It had suggested that a rider cut down on any draft by making oneself as sleek and small as possible. She liked to go down this hill with her eyes closed.There weren’t many opportunities in the Plain life to let go and go all out. This hill, though, offered a taste of it. Danger and risk.
    Suddenly, she heard someone yell “Watch out!” then a loud “ooouf” sound as her eyes flew open.

    Chris Yoder was heading home from a long day at Windmill Farm. He had ducked through a cornfield filled with drying, green-golden stalks and slipped out to cross the road, when suddenly a flash of a red scooter flew right into him. He yelled, but it was too late. Chris was thrown into the ditch on the side of the road. Headfirst. Into murky, stagnant ditch water.
    “I’m so sorry,” someone called to him. “Are you hurt? I had my eyes closed and didn’t see you.”
    Even though Chris had landed in water, his head had hit the bottom and he was sure he was seeing stars. He was drenched in smelly ditch water. A big yellow dog peered down at him in the ditch and let out a feeble “Woof.” Chris shook himself off and staggered onto solid ground. Life returned to him pretty quick as he sized up his attacker—a young