Watch How We Walk Read Online Free Page A

close to Tammy’s feet.
    â€” Now get lost. It’ll be worse next time.
    â€” Whatever. As if I care. Tammy shoves her hands deep into her pockets and starts walking down the other side of the road. Emily watches her fade into the snow and disappear.
    â€” Let’s get out of here. Get in the car, Emily.
    Emily stays where she is. She doesn’t know the girl driving the rusting car, or the silent boy who stares at them, and they’ll get in trouble if they get a ride from worldly kids. Snow pelts her face and stings her eyes and her wet coat and boots are too heavy for her to move in.
    â€” Lenora . . . She tries to whisper.
    â€” We’re not allowed—
    â€” Hurry up! It’s freezing! Lenora opens the door to the back seat and pushes Emily in.
    â€” Just drop us off before the bend in the road by my place, okay, Marla?
    Emily doesn’t argue. Lenora knows what’s right and wrong, so this must be okay. Maybe there are different kinds of worldly people, the kind to avoid — persecutors, like Tammy Bales — and the kind who aren’t so bad, who even help you. Maybe Lenora even Witnesses to them, maybe she gives them copies of The Watchtower and Awake! and pretty soon they’re going to start coming with them to the meetings. Before high school, her sister often convinced kids from primary school to come to the Hall with them, until they started asking their parents if they could stand out in the hallway with Lenora during the national anthem at school too, and then their parents made them stop.
    Emily tries to picture Lenora’s friends sitting attentively on Sunday morning, but then sees the boy in his leather jacket slumped and scowling, legs sticking out in the aisle, an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear. The sisters would cluck and frown at Marla’s thick black eyeliner and lipstick and short skirt. Still, imagining them at the Hall makes Emily feel better as they drive through the slush, closer and closer to home.
    Then Lenora turns to the boy and touches his shoulder.
    â€” Give me a drag, will you?
    He turns around, winks, and hands Lenora a cigarette. Emily goes rigid next to her. She’s never seen Lenora smoke before. Cigarettes and drugs are against their religion. Lenora puts it into her mouth and sucks on it, as her eyes crinkle and she coughs a little.
    â€” Shut up. Lenora responds as though reading her mind.
    â€” Don’t look at me like that. And stop crying. Good thing I came along when I did, seeing as you can’t take care of yourself. She dabs Emily’s face with her damp scarf and it scratches her cheeks like sandpaper. The cigarette smoke fills the car and hurts Emily’s nostrils and she sniffles. Until then, she didn’t even realize she was still crying.
    She says nothing about the smoking. What would have happened if Lenora hadn’t been there? Maybe Tammy would have beaten her up so badly that she’d still be lying in the ditch, unconscious, as the snow fell and covered her. She could have frozen to death and no one would find her until the spring, a sodden lump on the side of the road. It would be her own fault for not being able to stand up to Tammy. No one picks on Lenora; she’s strong and isn’t afraid of anyone. Emily doesn’t know why Jehovah God didn’t make her more like her sister.
    The girl driving the car turns the music up so loud they can’t hear each other. The three teenagers pass the cigarette around until they pull over. There are smears of black lipstick on the end of it. Emily feels as though she’s been dropped into an unfamiliar universe, one happening at the same time as the regular world, but just off by enough to be completely wrong. She decides she’ll have to find out more about her sister’s secret life. Just like Trixie Belden, she’ll have to be a detective and start following Lenora. Maybe she’ll even figure out some way to