All the Answers Read Online Free

tall grass and end up covered in burrs and dandelion fluff.
    Today the goats were fenced in, and that was good. Ava wanted to get to her room, close the door, and think.
    â€œ
Mehhh!
” Ethel bleated at her as she hurried toward the house.
    â€œThat you, sugarplum?” Gram called when the kitchen door slammed.
    â€œYep!” Ava grabbed two warm peanut butter cookies from the kitchen counter and headed for the living room. Gram was there, spraying water on a shirt on the ironing board and watching CNN. Gram’s Jesus notebook was open next to the starch. She kept a list of all the situations in the world that she thought needed help so she could pray for them.
    Ava knew that her name ended up on Gram’s list a lot of days, too. Gram was the first person to notice when Ava was feelingespecially anxious. She always caught Ava blinking too much, a sure sign Ava’s insides were in knots. Then Gram would ask if she was okay, and Ava would insist she was fine, but she knew as soon as she left the room her name was going in that notebook right next to the prime ministers and presidents and war-torn nations in Africa.
    Jesus had a mustache on the notebook cover now, thanks to Marcus and his black Sharpie. When Ava first saw that, she thought Gram would be furious, but Gram laughed and said if Jesus doesn’t have a sense of humor, then nobody does.
    â€œGot homework?” Gram said, turning over the shirt.
    â€œYep, I’m going to go start on it. Sophie’s coming over later.” Ava blew Gram a kiss and headed up to her room. If she had time after homework, she wanted to find a new quote for her wall. She’d started posting them on big pieces of paper, like Mrs. Galvin’s in the library.
    The bulletin board next to Ava’s desk wasn’t cluttered with party photos and ribbons and medals like Sophie’s, but she did have a couple of ribbons from the fun runs she used to do in elementary school. Ava was pretty fast, even though the only running she did now was fleeing from Ethel. Besides the ribbons, the bulletin board held some yarn-and-feather crafts from her day camp last summer and a couple of school art projects—an Egyptian foil drawing and a black-and-white labyrinth design that had taken her forever.
    She had two quote posters now, too, designed with coloredmarkers and her little owl cartoons. The first quote was from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain
.
    Ava didn’t know who Henry was, but she liked the quote because it reminded her of that Katina D. video. Ava wished she could be the kind of person who danced through a thunderstorm instead of hiding under the bed with dust bunnies and old stuffed animals. Sophie would do that, at least until Ava warned her that lightning kills an average of sixty people in the United States every year and made her come inside.
    The other quote on Ava’s wall was attributed to her mom’s favorite writer, Maya Angelou:
    I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel
.
    Ava liked that one because even though she messed up math tests and was afraid to try out for the track team and jazz band, she knew she was a pretty good friend. It was nice to think that mattered.
    Ava thought she might add Mrs. Galvin’s forgiveness quote from the library next, but she needed to do homework first, so she sat down at her desk and pulled out her math folder. The test review packet was right on top. Ava knew all the formulas now that the test was over. Maybe that voice in class really had been the voice in her head, finally doing its job.
    Ava opened her desk drawer and took out a yellow legal pad. Mom ordered boxes of them to use for her financial stuff, andAva had come to like them, too. They made her feel organized and official and in control. This one had a dots-and-boxes game on