Read Huckleberry Harvest for Free Online Page B

easy to ignore. Kristina liked to sneak up on him with all the subtlety of a charging bull. He could always hear her coming from about a mile away.
    Noah took a deep breath. He must learn to relax. His jaw would crack if he clenched it any tighter.
    At least Kristina proved predictable. She wanted him to see her, even while she pretended to want to hide. Before, if he didn’t look her way, she and her giggly friends would start making noises, hoping he’d look up and catch a glimpse of them. Ach , but he found it irritating. Why wouldn’t that girl just leave him alone?
    He was clenching his jaw again.
    If Kristina insisted on her infatuation much longer, he wouldn’t have any teeth left.
    It galled him that when a pretty girl had shown up at his house four days ago, she had come to give him a lecture about being nice. He’d bent over backward to be nice to Kristina. But there was only so much a boy could take before he had to put a stop to the nonsense. If Mandy Helmuth was so willing to believe the tales of a silly girl like Kristina Beachy, then she didn’t deserve to know the truth.
    Kristina stood near the river behind a tall maple, but he couldn’t tell if she had anybody with her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her peek her head out from behind the tree and pull it back again, as if appearing and disappearing would spark his interest.
    When he paid no heed to that, she hooted like an owl. Jethro and Alvin Coblentz turned their heads in the direction of the sound, but Noah didn’t even glance up. Let Kristina chirp, bark, howl, or oink all day long. He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of looking.
    Trying to be oblivious to all the birds dying behind that maple tree over there, he unclamped his jaw and got on his hands and knees to inspect the corn picker.
    “Your axle’s bent,” he told Jethro. “You must have gone over a mighty big bump in the road.”
    Jethro, a sturdy, weathered Amishman of fifty-five, stroked his hand down the length of his beard. Jethro was missing both his middle and ring fingers just above the knuckles. Corn pickers tended to jam up, and farmers all too often were tempted to clear the machinery by hand. More than one corn farmer had lost a finger to the gathering chains of the picker.
    “I guess I used it too rough,” Alvin said. Alvin was Jethro’s son, probably ten years Noah’s senior. Alvin and Jethro farmed the land together, but Alvin tended to be careless with his equipment. The Coblentzes summoned Noah to their farm on a regular basis to fix something—not that he was complaining. He always needed the work.
    Noah paused to listen. The screech owls had stopped. Maybe Kristina had given up early. “Your tires could use more air too.”
    The screaming made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Kristina had never out-and-out screamed to get his attention before. She’d never charged at him like a wild woman either, but there she was, screaming hysterically and sprinting out of the woods as if she were fleeing from a forest beast. Noah leaped to his feet. Had she seen a bear?
    “Noah, Noah. Mandy fell in the river. She’s drowning!”
    Noah didn’t even stop to ask just how Kristina’s pretty friend had happened to fall into the river. He raced to the maple tree with Kristina, Alvin and Jethro close behind. He got to the bank and focused his eyes downriver. “I don’t see her.”
    Kristina sobbed uncontrollably. “She’s under . . . she’s drowned . . . I pushed her.”
    Knowing he’d get no help from Kristina, Noah shoved his hand into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and slapped it into Jethro’s hand. “Can you call the police?” He pointed at Kristina, whose face was white as a newly washed sheet. “Find a place to sit down, Kristina. I’ll go downriver and see if I can see her.”
    “I’m coming too,” Alvin said.
    Noah nodded. Without waiting for Alvin to keep up, he raced along the bank, keeping his gaze glued to the water for