What Happened to Ivy Read Online Free Page B

wide-open grin. I swirl her suddenly in the opposite direction and she laughs so hard she’s soon got all of us laughing – me, Dad, Mom, and Hannah still up by the shore, looking gorgeous in her red bathing suit, burying her feet in the sand at the water’s edge.
    After a while my parents take Ivy inside. “How about a swim?” I suggest to Hannah.
    “Promise you won’t think I’m an idiot?” she says.
    “Why?”
    “David, promise?”
    “Okay, I promise I won’t think you’re an idiot.”
    “I can’t swim.”
    “Well, let me teach you then.”
    “No, seriously. Please? I can’t.”
    She looks so panic-struck, I just say, “Sure. No problem.”
    That evening during a rummy game, the heat breaks. A cool breeze blows in the window. My parents take turns playing hands so one of them can be with Ivy, trying to figure out how to calm her down. She’s been wailing pretty steadily ever since we finished ‘ feemeen ’ but I hardly notice because under the table, Hannah’s foot is leaning against mine. She probably doesn’t know she’s doing it. She probably thinks she’s leaning her foot against the pedestal in the middle of the table. But all I care about is the pressure of that bare foot nestled up against mine in the dark space under the table.

Chapter 8
    After a night interrupted a few times by Ivy hollering, I wake to the sound of pounding rain on the roof of the cottage. Over breakfast it settles into a steady drizzle, the kind not likely to let up any time soon. So much for walking in the dunes with Hannah today.
    After breakfast, she pulls a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle from a shelf, an old one Mom got years ago, when she was the one into gardening. Together, Hannah and I clear the table to make room for it and start sifting through the box for edge pieces.
    Most of the edge and the hydrangeas in the lower half of the puzzle are together, we’ve eaten lunch and the dishes have been cleared away, and still the rain continues. Mom’s busy with Ivy, Dad heads into the kitchen to try to fix a leaky pipe under the sink, and Hannah and I go back to our puzzle. With her shoulder so close beside mine, it’s easy for me to imagine she feels the same about being close to me as I feel about being close to her. And there’s that ear that I can’t not look at every time she tucks her hair behind it.
    Into the sound of the wet clattering on the roof comes the tinkly tune from a jack-in-the-box that was Dad’s when he was a kid. All a-round the cob-ble-er’s bench, the monkey chased the wea-sel… I played with it too, back when I was my parents’ only kid.
    Mom sings along with the tinny music coming from the box. “The monkey thought it was a-all in fun…”
    Of course I lost interest in the toy long before I was eleven.
    “What comes next, Ivy?” Mom asks.
    The rain clatters on. I look up from my search for a lopsided H-shaped piece of red peony and see Ivy lift her head from her shoulder as if she’s about to answer, but her eyes aren’t focused anywhere, and her head flops again toward her chest.
    Mom turns the handle again. Jack jumps out of his box. “Pop!” Mom says.
    Still Ivy doesn’t react.
    Mom finishes the song and begins cranking the handle again. Again the tinkly tune, and again, “All a-round the cob-ble-er’s bench, the monkey chased the wea-sel…The monkey thought it was a-all in fun…”
    Sometimes Ivy yells ‘pop’ before it’s even close to time for Jack to jump out of the box, but today Mom waits, again. Again she says, “Pop!” and again finishes the song. Along with the tinkly tune, she again starts to sing, “All a-round the cob-ble-er’s bench…”
    Dad pulls his head out from under the kitchen sink. “Give it up, Anne. Can’t you see she’s never going to get it?”
    “Yes she will. She’s got it before. Lots of times.” Mom keeps turning the handle. “The monkey chased the—”
    “Stop!” Dad clenches the wrench tightly in his fist. “ Look at her!