Read Best Friends for Free Online

That’s enough.”
    Aunt Allie leveled her gaze on Ruby. “Your schoolwork,” she said, “leaves a lot to be desired.”
    Ruby knew this was true, but she said, “I’m tired. The rehearsal was really hard.”
    â€œI think,” said Aunt Allie, “that you have your priorities reversed. For heaven’s sake, Ruby, Witches is just a school play. But your studies are the pathway to the future.”
    Well.
    Ruby could not believe her ears. Just a school play? Did Aunt Allie know nothing? This was perhaps the most important thing Ruby had ever done. She was starring in the play. Starring in it. As in, playing the most important role. Not only was she learning things such as blocking and how to work with props and scenery (Ruby had been in plays before but never in a production as involved and complicated as this one), but she had to memorize pages and pages of material. And cry! She had to cry! She’d been able to make tears run down her cheeks.
    Ruby sat up and glared at her aunt. Wait until opening night, she thought. Ruby would show Aunt Allie that what she had worked so hard on all year long was far from just a school play .
    Aunt Allie smiled at Ruby as her niece left the living room. “I’ll be glad to quiz you on your science chapters,” she said.
    â€œOkay,” Ruby replied, and she clumped up the stairs. “I’m going to study now.” Aunt Allie didn’t need to know that she was going to study her lines and not Chapter Eleven in Our Wide World of Nature .

If on a fine spring day you were to decide to visit Camden Falls, Massachusetts, you would find a small town with lots of nice shops on Main Street. You could pop into Cover to Cover and buy a book. You could order something to drink (hot or cold) at Frank’s Beans. You could backtrack a bit and go to the T-shirt Emporium for an I ’ VE BEEN TO CAMDEN FALLS shirt. (Nobody who lives in Camden Falls ever wears these shirts, but the tourists like them.) Cross the street and buy an ice-cream cone at Dutch Haus. Check out the local hiking guides in Doubletree Sporting Goods, then admire the window of Needle and Thread, recently decorated with vibrant felt flowers by Flora and Ruby Northrop and Olivia Walter. Continue south on Main Street and you’ll pass a store currently being renovated with a sign above the door reading SINCERELY YOURS . A notice taped to the window informs you that the store will open in May and will sell not only candy and baked goods but everything you might need to create a gift basket for any occasion — a birthday, a baby shower, a holiday, a graduation, a retirement. Take out your notebook and write down the phone number and Web address at the bottom of the notice because starting in June, you’ll be able to order these gift baskets by phone or over the Internet.
    Now, if you head back to the parking lot behind the shops on the east side of the street, you can load your purchases into your car and take a drive in the country. Camden Falls is situated at the foot of some hills (you really can’t call them mountains), with flatter country spreading out in other directions. Nikki Sherman and her family live off to the west of town, and to the northwest is the new home of Mrs. Willet. Mary Lou Willet, whose husband, Bill, occupies the second Row House from the left on Aiken Avenue, has been living at Three Oaks for several months now. Three Oaks, Mr. Willet told Min, is what is known as a continuing-care retirement community with apartments for independent living as well as rooms for people who are ill or who can no longer take care of themselves. There’s a wing for people with Alzheimer’s disease, and this is where Mrs. Willet lives. If you were to peek through her window at Three Oaks on this early spring day, you would find a pleasant room furnished with things from the Willets’ house. Sitting on the bed is a teddy bear that Robby