The Poe Estate by Polly Shulman Page B

let me finish. Anyway, I don’t really mind carrying you, as long as it’s not very far. If I sing you the nut tree song, will you stop howling?” And she would slap a Band-Aid on my knee, hug me impatiently and a little too hard, and sing my favorite nursery rhyme, the one about the nut tree and the princess and the golden pear.
    â€œThorne girls take good care of their siblings,” I told the air. “Listen to this.” I read the passage about the frock and the blackberries out loud. Kitty wasn’t completely present right then—not present enough to understand the words—but I felt
something
, so I thought she might be nearby. She would probably get the gist.
    I could have summoned her with the whistle, but I almost never did that nowadays. She came too often as it was. I had a feeling that the more I used the whistle, the thinner I would make the barrier between her world and mine. What if it wore away to nothing?
    When I got to the later sections in Miss Mary’s diary, though—the parts when she wrote about sailing to China on grown-up John’s ship—I felt a presence much more sinisterthan Kitty’s or Windy’s. The back of my neck prickled. It felt more like that second presence from the other night, the hard, oppressive presence that had chased Windy off.
    â€œWho are you?” I asked the air.
    Nobody answered.
    â€œGo away, then!”
    Nobody answered again. But nobody left, either.
    â€œOkay, stay, then. Whatever. I’m a Thorne—you can’t scare me. I belong here.”
    I hoped it was true. It didn’t really feel true, whatever Cousin Hepzibah said.
    That night dreams chopped my sleep into a zillion pieces. I dreamed about severed hands and dead Thorne kids, about lost wills and storms at sea. That hard presence haunted all my dreams.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    Fashion Advice
    S chool lunch on Friday was Mystery Stew, which was bad enough. Becky and Hannah Lee made it worse by pointing at my ankles. Looking down, I saw that the gap between my jeans hem and my shoes had widened to show way more sock than was considered proper in North Harbor society.
    These were the last clothes I had left from Kitty. I remembered how much I hated having to wear Kitty’s hand-me-downs when I was little. I wanted something new, something of my own, especially in colors that looked good on a pale blonde, not a rosy redhead. Then, after she died, her clothes were all I wanted to wear. They made me feel she was hugging me.
    Hugging me pretty tightly, these days. I was taller now than she’d ever been, and the waistband was starting to pinch. I knew I’d been growing, but I hadn’t realized it had gotten so bad. Spring might be on its way, but it was still far too cold out to just turn my jeans into cutoffs.
    It’s not that the snickering bothered
me
. But I worried what would happen if Becky and Hannah got Kitty riled up. She never liked it when people laughed at me, and I didn’t think she would react too well to having her jeans mocked, either.
    I was scanning the chaotic cafeteria for an empty seat far away from the snickerers when I heard my name. DoloresPereira waved me over to the table where she was sitting with her cousin Amanda.
    â€œAsk her, Lola,” said Amanda, giggling.
    â€œNo, you ask her,” said Lola. “You’re the one who wants to know.”
    â€œAsk me about what?”
    â€œGo on, Amanda!” said Lola.
    â€œYou’ve been hanging out with Cole Farley, right?” said Amanda.
    â€œUh, yeah. I guess,” I said.
    â€œWhat’s his family like? Is his brother as cute as he is?”
    â€œI don’t know. I haven’t met his family,” I said.
    â€œSee? I told you,” said Lola to her cousin. “What do you think of Cole, though?” she asked me.
    â€œHe’s okay. When he’s not being obnoxious.”
    â€œHow’s he obnoxious?” asked