The Art of Keeping Cool by Janet Taylor Lisle

Author:Janet Taylor Lisle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

9

I DRAGGED CAROLYN out of bed early the next morning and took her up to Grandma’s house.

Since school had let out, we’d been getting up whenever we wanted, eight or even nine o’clock, long after my mother left for work at seven. I’d cook some eggs or a little bacon for us, and wash up after. Cooking and taking care of Carolyn were things I’d learned how to do at the farm. There’d been times when both Mom and Dad had to get out early for spring planting, or to bring in a crop that was threatened by weather. Carolyn was used to me being in charge, but that morning she was mulish. She didn’t like being woken up with no warning.

“Why do we got to go to Grandma’s now?” she complained sleepily as we headed up the lane. “Anyway, I’m sick of being there all the time. There’s nothing to do. Let’s go to the beach.”

“We can’t today.”

“Why not?”

“They’re firing the big guns at the fort this morning. After I drop you off I’ve got to go back to the cottage and look after things.”

“But, aren’t you going to watch?” Carolyn asked me.

“Watch what?”

“The big guns.”

“No, I’m not,” I lied. “Mom told me to stay with the house.”

“You aren’t going to, though, are you,” Carolyn said, after a look at my face. “I bet you’re going to watch the guns.”

“Why do you think that? I just said I was going home.” I glanced down at her. She’d turned six that spring and begun to think she was smart.

“Well, I think you are because you got to,” Carolyn said coolly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and walked her along faster. But a few minutes later, as we were coming up on Grandma’s kitchen door, I thought I’d better cover my bases so I said:

“You wouldn’t tell on me, would you?”

Carolyn shook her head. “I wouldn’t.”

“I’ll do the same for you someday.”

“Okay, and will you take me to the beach, too? I never get to go.”

I promised I would when the right time came. We caught each other’s eyes and kind of smiled because it was the first real bargain we’d ever done together.

My idea was that Elliot and I would go down to the bay beach together the way we had before, but:

“I can’t. I’ve got plans,” he told me when I went up to his room.

“I guess I know what they are,” I said angrily.

“So what?” Elliot fired back. “I can do what I want.”

He’d been spending more and more time with Abel Hoffman. It was beginning to get to me. Whenever I said anything though, he’d blow his stack and tell me I was against him like everybody else.

“I’m not against you. I’m worried about you.”

“You’re against Abel, too.”

“I am not! I think it’s terrible what happened when he got beat up.”

I really wasn’t against Abel in the beginning. I even went to visit him with Elliot a few times after that first time. I

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