Read Virginia Hamilton for Free Online Page B

frantic. And felt like crying.
    Someone’s stole it!
    The idea of her bike getting taken wasn’t half so bad as the thought that someone might be watching her.
    There it is.
    Finding the bike right where she had left it, not four feet from the fence.
    “That’s what happens when you panic,” she told herself.
    By the time she and the bike were through the fence again, she was sure it was going to pour down rain on her. The day had grown dreary; it felt full, as though about to burst. Ten minutes later, pedaling and pulling as hard as she could, she had reached the top of the Quinella Road and crossed the silver-smooth tracks of the B&O Railroad.
    Justice gave a glance to the tracks as she crossed them:
    What’d you go and do—bring this bad weather all the way from Nebraska? Well, we don’t want it, either. Better take it back by Friday, too.
    She was gone then, hurrying faster than it was safe over Morrey Street, full of potholes. Halfway home, she looked up to find an ugly rain cloud over her head.
    It never rained. The day brightened again. Patches of sun broke through and it was hot and still as ever.
    Justice turned down the Union Road into her gravel lane and passed under the great old tree.
    Cottonwoman! I did it today and I’ll be fine on Friday, too.
    Still, Justice didn’t know how she was supposed to race a snake. But she didn’t intend to let her brothers or any other boys know that.
    I’ll listen and I’m sure to find out after supper, she thought.
    About every other evening, neighborhood boys gathered in the Douglass field; Justice would be sure to be there.
    She let her bike fall by the porch steps. There was a sudden thundercrash. Justice grabbed her bike again and hurried with it up onto the porch.
    She paused to listen for more thunder, but then smiled grimly. No thunder, it was Thomas. She stood the bike against the porch rail and went to open the front door. As she silently peeked around to her left within the house, a pulse of drumbeating swelled to crash in her face.
    Thomas in the living room, seated behind his set of five drums. Still in his pajamas, he was absorbed by the flashing sticks in his hands. He dragged his drum set into the living room each morning. And beat drums from the time he got up until lunchtime, and again after. Later on, he would switch to timpani or kettledrums, as the huge copper drums were most often called. A person had to have a keen sense of pitch and rhythm to play the kettles, Thomas was quick to tell everyone. And he had perfect pitch.
    Justice sighed.
    What I have to live with.
    She eased around the door unseen by Thomas and headed for the kitchen in search of Levi. There she found him with the table set. He always made lunch for her and Thomas. Justice had once asked her mother why Levi had to make the sandwiches every day. And her mom had said that Levi never minded, that he liked the responsibility. Justice guessed he did, too, for he never once forgot to make lunch for her. He was at the stove now, concentrating on a skillet too small for the three cheese sandwiches crammed into it.
    “Boo,” Justice said, coming up behind him. “I left you in the living room.”
    “Wha—?” Levi whirled around, knocking the skillet across the stove top. He looked stunned, staring at her as if, for a moment, he hadn’t known who she was.
    “Hey, I was kidding,” she said. “You know—I left you drumming in the living room. Don’t you get it?”
    His face had paled. And standing there, speechless, he looked kind of afraid.
    “Oh … oh, yeah,” he said finally. “Ticey. Hi.”
    “Hi,” she said back, wondering at his being so startled.
    He laughed nervously and turned back to the stove.
    She could tell he hadn’t really understood her kidding. Maybe he had just been concentrating too hard on his work. But she felt better when she joked once in a while about her brothers being duplicates of one another. It wasn’t fair that she must look in a mirror in