Forest by Janet Taylor Lisle

Author:Janet Taylor Lisle [Lisle, Janet Taylor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-7180-3
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-12-13T22:45:00+00:00

LOWER FOREST

AMBER PADGETT LEANED BACK against pillows and stared up at the ceiling of her room. It was the only place she could look comfortably, aching as she did in every bone and joint. She’d spent all of yesterday lying in bed and still felt no better this morning. The fall from the white oak tree had been a hard one.

Across the room, the little squirrel was curled up asleep in the hamster cage. She had eaten a good breakfast of dried corn and raisins. Now she seemed in no worse condition than before her tumble from the tree two nights ago. Perhaps, Amber thought, the box had softened her landing. Wendell had found her cowering inside it on the ground and insisted on bringing her home again.

Nothing had cushioned Amber’s fall. A bandage across her chin covered a gash that had needed ten stitches to close. Her left wrist was fractured and encased to the elbow in a cast. Two back teeth were cracked from her chin’s impact with the ground. (The dentist would see to them later, when she could open her mouth.) Finally, her head throbbed from a concussion that the doctor had called “worth watching.”

“You were lucky not to break your neck,” he said. “And what are these odd little bites all over your shoulders?”

She had refused to answer. Wendell had done it for her, the double-crossing rat. Except for a scratch across one cheek, he was hardly hurt at all. Not even a sprained ankle.

“Wendell is younger. And softer,” Amber’s mother explained. “I suppose he just sort of bounced.”

Mrs. Padgett was being a most attentive nurse, always hovering in the bedroom door, trying to be cheerful. She appeared now, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“Amber dear, can I bring you some more chicken noodle soup?”

“No, thank you.”

“Another magazine or a book?”

“No.”

“A puzzle, a sweater, a radio, a—”

“Mother! I’m all right!”

“Well, you can’t mope around all day again staring at the ceiling.”

“Why not? It’s the only thing can do.” Tears welled up in Amber’s eyes. She turned her head away to hide them.

A small breeze came through the half-open window, flapping the torn screen to and fro. Outside, Amber saw a flash of green go by, disappear, then flash by again. It looked like a tree branch signaling in the wind.

“Tell Wendell to come,” she told her mother suddenly.

“Wendell! I thought you were never going to talk to him again. I thought he was on your permanent blacklist.”

“He is. Tell him to come, anyway. Soon.”

He arrived half an hour later—slouched in, his eyes on the floor. Amber saw that he was on the verge of tears himself, this soft brother, this bendable, traitorous one.

“So what’s happening out in the world?” she asked him coldly.

“Oh, Amber, I’m so sorry. Please, please don’t be mad. I didn’t mean to tell about the squirrels. Mom and Dad got it out of me. I was upset, and they made me tell.”

“Who says I’m mad?” Amber inquired. “Did I say I was mad?”

“No.

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