Read Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833) for Free Online Page B

Harbor. They were due back Thursday. Carlie packed a suitcase with some summer things, threw a couple of meals together for Daddy and me, and they were off. But not before she’d made Daddy talk to Bert about Dottie and me seeing each other again. They’d agreed, but no overnights, and the boys were still off limits.
    Dottie picked a blade of grass out of the lawn and split it down the middle. She put it between her thumbs, gave it a blow, and got a squeaky honk out of it. I tried it and spit all over my hands.
    â€œI don’t know why you can’t do that,” she said.
    â€œI’m not good at sports like you,” I said.
    â€œThis ain’t sports,” Dottie said. “It’s grass blowing.”
    I shrugged. Madeline moved her brush and blue slashed across the top of her painting. She moved it again, and another blue slash, lower and darker, appeared.
    â€œLet’s do something,” Dottie said.
    â€œWhat?” I said.
    â€œKeep-away,” she said. “You take Evie and I’ll take Maureen.”
    Dottie’s sister, Evie, was six, and Bud’s sister, Maureen, was five. Dottie called them pinkie girls, doll-playing girls. “Keep-away will be too hard for them,” I said.
    I watched an orange spider the size of a freckle move up Dottie’s leg. When it reached her knee, she smeared it. “Them things bite,” she said. “I got bit the other day, and I looked down and it was one of them.”
    â€œI never got bit by one,” I said.
    â€œYou probably did. You just didn’t know it,” Dottie said.
    Madeline shifted in her chair. A little breeze lifted the corner of her paper. Dottie picked a little weed shaped like a spoon and peeled the veins up from the stem and down the back of the leaf. Then she threw the stripped weed onto the lawn. “Grand have cookies?” she asked.
    â€œNo,” I said. “But she’ll let us make some.”
    â€œI don’t want to make ’em, I want to eat ’em,” Dottie said. She said to Madeline, “Ma, when can we go swimming? You almost done?”
    â€œNo,” Madeline said, in a faraway voice. “Not for a while.”
    â€œLet’s go to Grand’s and make cookies,” I said. “Tide’ll be in after we do that and then we can go swimming.”
    â€œOkay,” Dottie said. “It’ll pass the time.”
    Grand was watching a soap opera when we banged through the screen door.
    â€œWhat you doing in?” she called.
    â€œCan we make some cookies?” I asked.
    â€œJust a second,” Grand hollered. “Lisa’s going to tell Bob she’s leaving him for Howard. Been waiting for months for this. Hold your horses and I’ll be with you.”
    â€œWe can do it,” I said, but she didn’t hear me.
    â€œWish we had horses,” Dottie said, sitting in Grand’s rocker on the porch. “We could ride them somewhere.”
    â€œWhat kind of horse would you have?” I asked, sitting down in my own chair.
    â€œPalomino. Like Trigger.”
    â€œI’d have a black stallion,” I said. “He’d hate everyone but me. I could ride him without a saddle or a bridle.”
    â€œYou can’t even ride with a saddle,” Dottie pointed out.
    â€œNeither can you. We don’t even have saddles. Or horses. I’m just saying, if I had a horse, this is what I would want.”
    The television was pretty loud, so Dottie and I got to listen as Lisa told Bob she was leaving him. Lisa sounded more upset than Bob.
“I’m sorry,”
she cried,
“I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world. I do love you, Bob, I do, but . . .”
Bob mumbled a couple of words and Lisa started up again.
    â€œThat’s crap,” Dottie muttered.
    â€œYou mad?” I asked.
    â€œNo. Just bored.”
    Bob finally hollered at Lisa.
“You think I haven’t noticed you’ve