Rebel Spirits by Lois Ruby

Author:Lois Ruby [Ruby, Lois]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2013-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

hing that’s been murky in my mind suddenly runs clear. It’s like when a tune coils through your brain, but you just can’t pull out the title until you’re doing something mindless, like sweeping cobwebs off the ceiling. Now I recognize that sweet, pungent smell from the basement. I know it from biology, from frog dissection. It’s chloroform, a drug that can knock people unconscious. Why is that scent wafting through our cellar?

FROM THE KITCHEN window, Evan and I watch Gertie run around outside. The yard looks innocent enough in the yellowish late-afternoon glow. Up the hill’s the lawn-mower shed. Just a small barnlike building covered in pine boards, new but built to look old. Why did it feel so threatening the other night?

The garden sprinkler is hissing. Old Dryden’s kitchen garden is a riot of color, overflowing with radishes and cucumbers, peppers and zucchini, leafy herbs and vining tomato plants. And then I can’t stop my awful thought: Is it such a bountiful crop because of creepy Dryden’s loving, stoop-backed care? Or because this ground has been fertilized by so many human remains of the 1863 Battle?

Thankfully Evan interrupts my thoughts. “Let’s go down to the creek,” he says. “I want to talk to you about something.”

“Sounds ominous,” I tease, while inside I feel my stomach give a jump. We step outside and I whistle to Gertie. “Come on, Gertie Girl, water sports!”

She beats us down the hill and dives in like a water nymph while we wade in the shallow near the bank. Evan’s not talking, and I’m curious. I wish-wish-wish Nathaniel’s shimmery image would appear, but it’s just Evan beside me.

About halfway across the creek, Gertie’s head juts up out of the water, and she growls ferociously.

“What’s up, girl?” Maybe a water snake spooked her. She’s not usually that skittish. She swims back to me, her growl reduced to a low rumble. I love the smell of wet dog.

“So, I was wondering,” Evan says, like it’s a continuation of a chat we’ve been having all day. “There’s a thing tonight up at Herr Ridge.”

“What kind of thing?”

“A ball.”

Gertie wags her tail. Ball is one of her top ten words.

“Like a dance ball,” Evan elaborates. “Wanna go?”

I’m taken aback. I think of how many times I used to wish that Danny Bartoli would ask me to a school dance. He never did. Is Evan … asking me out?

“I’m not really a … ball kind of girl,” I explain. Plus, I’m supposed to meet Nathaniel later. I can’t miss that.

“Great, so I’ll come by and get you at nine o’clock.” Evan grins at me, and I laugh despite myself.

“Try to scare up a nineteenth-century ball gown,” he adds. “Plus white gloves, parasol, the whole shebang.” He reaches across Gertie and winds my hair into a bun up on the crown of my head. I’m surprised by the sudden contact, but I don’t mind it. “Nice locks for an upsweep ’do, a few tendrils on the side, maybe?”

I shake my hair loose.

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