One for Sorrow by Mary Downing Hahn

Author:Mary Downing Hahn
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

While he and Mother chatted, I looked for Elsie. I finally spotted her in a shadowy corner. She was studying a chart of the human skeleton as if she were looking into a mirror.

Dr. Hughes’s eyes followed mine to the spot where Elsie floated.

“What are you looking at, Annie? You’ve been gazing around the room as if you expect to see something.”

“There’s a cobweb in the corner.” I pointed. “Right there. That’s what I was looking at.”

Mother squinted at the ceiling. “I don’t see a cobweb or even a speck of dust, Annie, and even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t mention it. It’s impolite to find fault.”

Dr. Hughes laughed. “I think our Annie was just being helpful.”

Mother handed me my coat and all the other things I had to wear in cold weather. While I put them on, I felt her watching me closely. Elsie watched, too.

As we walked down Portman Street toward home, Mother took my hand in hers as if I were five years old again. “Annie,” she said, “are you certain you’re all right?”

“Dr. Hughes thinks so.”

Elsie was walking just ahead, barefoot, wearing nothing but her silk dress. Every now and then she floated about five feet off the ground and circled Mother and me.

“My,” Mother said, “how much colder it feels in this spot. It must be the shadow of the pine trees.”

Elsie grinned at me and made a face at Mother, who walked on, complaining about the cold.

At home, Elsie followed me upstairs and prowled around my room. Nodding to herself, she touched my dollhouse, my books, my bed, the lacy curtains. She opened the wardrobe and examined my clothes. She scooped up Edward Bear and made him growl.

“Yes, it’s all just as it was the time I visited,” she murmured, “the one day in my whole life I had a friend.”

Smirking at me, she picked up Antoinette, freshly mended and looking as perfect as the day I found her under the Christmas tree. Tipping the doll back and forth, she watched her eyes open and shut and listened to her cry “Mama, Mama.”

I reached for Antoinette, but Elsie tossed her aside. “You have everything I ever wanted. All I wanted was for you to share it with me. But, oh no, you were too selfish.”

The more Elsie talked, the angrier she got. “I needed you to be my friend. Was that too much to ask?”

“If you wanted me to be your friend, you shouldn’t have broken my favorite doll. You tried to make the other girls hate me. You wouldn’t let me play games or seesaw—”

“Oh, pish posh,” Elsie said. “You never gave me a chance to be nice. You shut me out of everything. You and those other girls. Why did you like them better than me? What was so special about them?”

“Annie,” Mother called from downstairs, “is someone up there with you?”

I left my room and scurried down the steps. “No,” I lied. “Nobody’s upstairs. I’m by myself.”

“It sounded as if you were talking to someone.

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