Dragonfly Secret by Carolyn J. Gold

Chapter One
    M y grandfather was out in the backyard of my aunt’s house, cussing a steady stream of words so nasty it was a miracle the grass didn’t wither and die around him, all because the lawn mower wasn’t running to suit him. He had to raise his voice to hear himself over its roar, and he raised it enough that everyone in the neighborhood could hear him.
    When Gramps can’t hear her, Mother calls him a cantankerous old grouch. The corners of her mouth always twitch when she says it, as if she’s trying not to smile. She knows he’s not really mean. He just likes to sound as if he is.
    His name is Nathan, the same as mine, but we always call him Gramps. He once told me he’d lived so long that all his friends were dead. He’s eighty years old, so maybe it’s true, but most everybody who knows him figures he never had any friends to start with. He isn’t what most people call likable, but Jessie and I love him.
    I sat on the back porch and fingered the bandage on my arm where I’d scraped it falling out of a tree that morning. One of my eyes was turning black from landing on my head. I looked as mean as Gramps sounded.
    Jessie sat beside me on the bottom step, wearing an almost new blue dress with a matching ribbon to tie back her red ponytail. Her ice cream melted slowly beside her. Our cousin Allison sat on the top step, wearing a frilly pink party dress and nibbling the icing off a piece of Gramps’s birthday cake.
    Jessie studied her spoon. “I wish Gramps wouldn’t yell like that.”
    â€œHe wouldn’t use that language if he thought we could hear him,” I told her. It was true. She’s eight, and I’m twelve. Grown-ups think there are a lot of things we shouldn’t hear. They also seem to think children are deaf.
    â€œMy mother says it’s a nasty habit and only bad people swear. My mother says talking like that will make your heart turn black.” Allison gave a self-righteous little smirk and returned to digging a cherry out of her ice cream. She was six, but half the time she acted as if she was four. She had every toy Jessie had ever dreamed of, and if she played with them at all, it wasn’t when anyone else was around.
    Sometimes I wondered if Aunt Louise had bought Allison somewhere, to be sure she’d get a perfect child. Blue eyes, golden hair, never a speck of dirt on her shiny white shoes. Aunt Louise thought Allison was perfect. I thought she was a pain.
    â€œYour mother doesn’t know Gramps,” I said.
    I sighed and jabbed my fork into the big slab of birthday cake on my plate, smearing it around so it would look as if I’d eaten most of it. I don’t much like spice cake, anyway, and this one was the main reason we were here, instead of fifty miles away in our own backyard enjoying the lazy warmth of a summer Sunday.
    Every year, Aunt Louise insists that we spend Gramps’s birthday at her house, even though Gramps lives with us and hates to drive so far. “I hardly ever get to see him,” she says in a sweet whiny voice. “He’s my father, too, you know.”
    Every year, Mother gives in and talks him into going to visit his other daughter.
    â€œYou know darned well she doesn’t give a hoot about me, Kate,” he always complains to Mother. “She wants me in a nursing home so she can sell the old farm and spend the money on another highfalutin trip to somewhere nobody speaks English.”
    â€œNow, Dad,” Mother soothes, straightening the collar on the old plaid shirt he always wears. “You haven’t even been out to see the farm in ages. Why should you care? Louise loves you as much as I do. She just thinks that’s what would be best for you.”
    He’ll snort and rub his nose, as if the big wart that grows there is suddenly itching something terrible. “If she cared about me half as much as you say, she’d get me something I could