Eleven Read Online Free Page B

stopped. He hadn't told her about his reading yet,and she was coming home with him this afternoon. “Want to go outside?” he asked.
    “I guess.” She followed him out. The grass was coming in green now, and a robin chirped in one of the two trees Mrs. Waring had pointed out years ago.
    Sam sank down on the step, and Caroline sat too. “One thing? Are we allowed to do this?” she asked, pulling her hair into a knot in back of her head.
    He laughed. “One thing? No.”
    She waved her hand. She was wearing nail polish, a horrible Easter egg purple. “You do this every afternoon after lunch.” Her eyes were wide behind her glasses. “What nerve.”
    So she'd noticed. “Most of the time I go to the Resource Room for reading,” he said.
    She reached out to touch one of the daffodils at the side of the steps. He couldn't see her face.
    “I have a little trouble reading.” A
little?
“They call it a learning disability. I'm supposed to spend part of the day in a regular classroom and part in the Resource Room.” He rushed on. “When you come over to work on the castle, I could use some help.”
    “I've never taught anyone to read, but I suppose I could try.”
    It made him grin to think about it: Caroline trying to teach him how to read. Everyone else had tried, and kept trying; they didn't want to admit that he'd given up.
    Anima read aloud every night, running her fingers along the words so he could see. Mack cut cards with pictures and the words underneath. He pulled them out as often as he could and made Sam try to read them. And even Onji had taped up signs along the salad bar.
“Macaroni, Sam, for Pete's sake. What else could it be?”
as Anima had said gently,
“Onji, 1 don't think you spell
macaroni
with a
y.”
    They'd all laughed, and Onji had winked. “So I don't spell too well, Sam.”
    Now Sam began again. “There's a box in the attic.” He waved his hand. “Maybe you'd read some stuff to me.”
    “What kind of stuff?”
    “A newspaper clipping with my picture, to begin with. It says I was missing. Am missing?” He hesitated. “Still missing?”
    Caroline peered at him, her glasses in her lap now. “You're joking.”
    He shook his head. “I wish.”
    “I'll try.” She hesitated. “But listen, I don't have much time.”
    What had she told him the other day in the cafeteria?
“Don't think I'm going to be friends. 1 won't be here long enough.”
    “I'm leaving for my own castle soon,” she said.
    “You're joking now.”
    “You don't think I look like a princess?” She grinned, showing her braces. There was a constellation of freckles on her cheeks. “I'm leaving, but not for a castle.”
    “But—”
    “My father's a painter, so we have to go where he wants to paint.”
    Sam raised his shoulders. “He could paint right here. There are a million houses, I bet.”
    She laughed. “He paints sunsets, and waves crashing on the shore, and rain on the water.” She waved her hand, bracelets jangling. “Stuff like that. My mother makes figures out of clay.” She raised one shoulder. “I can't draw a straight line.”
    Sam nodded.
    “We move around. Last winter we were in California, and the spring in Canada. I've never even been in New York State before.” She spread her hands wide. “My father's friend lent us a house until we go somewhere else. A place called Turnerville.”
    He didn't want her to know how sorry he was, so he just said, “Turnerville.”
    “It's still in New York, I think.” The bracelets jangled again.
    “How can you do that? Keep moving around—” But then he stopped. It wasn't the first time kids had come for only a couple of months. That Chinese kid whose father did something with computers left after a year, and sent a pack of pictures to the class. A girl, he couldn't remember her name, whose mother was going to college somewhere nearby. They'd left too. And the kids whose families came to pick apples and grapes—
    The outside door opened behind them.