Beethoven in Paradise by Barbara O'Connor

Author:Barbara O'Connor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Published: 2012-01-13T05:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

THE NOONDAY SUN was so hot that little bubbles of melted tar dotted the road. By the time Martin got to Sybil’s, the bottoms of his bare feet were crusted with the thick, gooey stuff. He went around back to the garden. Sybil sat in a lawn chair with her head down.

“Hey,” he called.

She looked up and waved a postcard in the air. “From my mom,” she said.

Martin sat down in the grass beside her chair. “You miss her?”

“Not enough to go to Texas like she’s trying to get me to do.” Sybil turned the postcard over and over in her hand. “Besides, I don’t need to hear how my clothes are too sloppy and my hair’s too stringy and my fingernails look ugly all chewed up.”

“Do you think your mom likes you?” Martin asked.

Sybil shrugged. “I guess so,” she said. “I never thought about it.”

“I mean, do you think she’d like you better if you quit biting your fingernails or ironed your clothes or something?” Martin watched a dragonfly swooping around the backyard.

“Naw. She’d just find something else I could do better.”

“Don’t that bother you?”

“Nope.” Sybil studied the postcard on her lap: an armadillo saying, “Wish you were here.”

“How come?” Martin asked.

“’Cause I think I’m fine just the way I am.”

Martin looked at Sybil, sitting in the lawn chair like the Queen of Cool, her long legs stretched out in front of her. Something mighty admirable about a kid who could talk like that. He took his harmonica out of his shirt pocket and played “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”

Sybil stood up and grinned down at him. “I never knew you could play the harmonica,” she said. “Where you been hiding that?”

“I ain’t been hiding it,” Martin said.

Sybil sat on the grass next to him. “I wish I could play an instrument.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Anything.” She looked at the harmonica in Martin’s hand. “What other instrument can you play?”

Martin pulled at a blade of grass and threw it at his feet. “I don’t know. My dad won’t give me a chance to find out.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means he don’t like nothing about me.” Martin could feel Sybil looking at him, but he kept pulling the grass, throwing the grass.

Sybil lay back with her hands under her head and crossed one foot over the other. Martin put his harmonica to his mouth and played. “Amazing Grace.” “Camptown Races.” “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.” Whatever came to mind.

Every now and then he glanced over at Sybil. There wasn’t much in this world that could have made him feel good about himself right then, but her smiling face and rocking feet came close.

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