Sophie Hartley and the Facts of Life by Stephanie Greene

Author:Stephanie Greene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

seven

Sophie almost chickened out. Even putting her hand on the knob of the door to the attic stairs felt dangerous. If Nora caught her, she was dead meat.

Clutching the pile of laundry that someone had left on the stairs below and Sophie had swooped up so that in the event Nora caught her, she could tell Nora she was putting away clean clothes, Sophie opened the door and started up the steps. They didn’t have carpeting, so she had to tread softly. When a step creaked, Sophie stopped and listened. There wasn’t a sound. She hurried the rest of the way to the top, before she could lose her nerve.

Good. Both doors—the door to Nora’s room and the door to the storage room across the hall—were open. Sophie was pretty sure she couldn’t be legally charged with trespassing if Nora’s door was open. If it came to that. Calling the police, that is.

Sophie shook herself. She was being dramatic. It was only because their dad was so mad at them. If Nora caught her and they got into another fight, all heck would break loose. There was no telling what Mr. Hartley would do, and Sophie didn’t want to find out.

She tiptoed into Nora’s room, went over to the bookshelf, and scanned the titles. Body, body, body . . . Nope. Nothing. Where would Nora have hidden it? Sophie looked around the room.

Aha—under the bed! As Sophie crouched to look, the same stair that had creaked before cried out. She leaped to her feet and spun around as Nora appeared at the top of the stairs.

“What are you doing up here?” Nora said furiously. Thankfully, she whispered it. She obviously didn’t want to get into more trouble with their dad, either.

“I thought you were on the computer!” Sophie whispered back.

“I forgot my notes!”

“I’m helping Dad by putting away clothes,” Sophie whispered. “I thought these were yours.”

“Yeah, right. Like I’m wearing Maura’s pajamas these days,” Nora hissed, plucking at the clown material in the middle of the pile.

“I mean, I’m supposed to put them in the footlocker in the storage room. Maura’s too big for them.”

“The storage room is over there,” Nora said in a deadly quiet voice. She pointed.

“I know where the storage room is,” Sophie said with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Omigod!” Nora slapped her hands over her face. “You’re wearing shoes!”

Nora was right. In her haste to find the book, Sophie had ignored both Nora’s ironclad rule about no shoes and the basket Nora had left at the bottom of the stairs where visitors were meant to leave theirs. Sophie saw the long black marks from her rubber soles on the white floor near the door and picked up speed.

“Shhh, I’m going. Don’t yell. Remember Dad.” She scurried into the storage room across the hall and dumped the clothes on the floor as Nora watched. Slipping off her shoes, Sophie waved them in the air. “Happy now?” she said, and escaped quickly down the steps.

“If you scratched the stairs, I’m going to kill you!” Nora hissed after her.

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