What the Moon Said by Gayle Rosengren

other one. “There,” she said when she was finished. “Now they both have something in them,” she explained. “To carry an empty bucket is bad luck.”
    Esther didn’t know how Ma kept track of so many ways to avoid bad luck, but she took the buckets and said, “Thanks, Ma. I’ll bring home lots of berries.”
    On her way to the road, feeling guiltier than ever, she fed the sandwich to Mickey so it would not go to waste. Then she put the crumpled sheet of waxed paper back in the bucket so it wouldn’t be empty. She spotted Pa walking through the wheat field. Still no rain had come. Pa’s walk was slow.
    Walter skipped behind him, raising little clouds of dust. Esther looked up at the sky. There were a few clouds off in the distance. Please, please, rain here, she begged them silently.
    It was a long walk to Bethany’s house. It was even farther away than the school. To make the walk more interesting, Esther pretended she was a brave explorer alone in the jungle. The cows in the fields were elephants. The horses were giraffes. And the dogs and cats in the farmyards were lions and tigers. She skulked past mailboxes on silent feet—the lions and tigers mustn’t hear! She trotted along the fence line with one spirited giraffe. And she made monkey noises at the elephants. They twitched their ears and one or two turned to stare.
    Esther laughed and chattered and loped along, swinging her buckets. In a surprisingly short time she was turning off the road at Bethany’s farm. And Bethany must have been watching, because she came running to meet her.
    Suddenly Esther remembered what Ma had said: “She is marked to warn people that she is dangerous.” An icy shiver trickled down her spine.
    â€œYou came!” Bethany cried.
    Her grin was enormous. Its warmth melted Esther’s fear in an instant. “Of course I came,” she said.
    Esther grabbed Bethany’s outstretched hand. They ran the rest of the way to the house. The closer they got, the more astonished Esther became. She had never seen Bethany’s house close up before. She’d only seen it from the road, and trees had partly blocked it. Now she could see it was white with green shutters. It had pots of geraniums on the porch, and even a rocking chair. It was just like her dream house, only bigger and better. She didn’t realize she had stopped to stare until Bethany tugged on her hand.
    â€œCome on,” Bethany urged. “Mama’s waiting.”
    Dazed, Esther tripped up the porch steps after her friend. Inside the house, she tried not to gawk. She had expected Bethany’s home to be much like her own. But it was far more like Shirley’s pretty home in Chicago than the Vogel farmhouse. There were carpets on the floors and pretty wallpapers on the walls. There were vases of flowers on the tables and snowy-white lace curtains at the window. And nowhere was there even one nasty old kerosene lamp. They had electricity.
    â€œHello, Esther,” Mrs. Klause greeted her from the kitchen—a kitchen with a real sink, a coal stove, and an icebox. “I hope you like pancakes, fried apples, and sausages.”
    Esther’s mouth watered. “I love them!” she said.
    Lunch was delicious, but more than that, it was fun. Lunch for the Klause family was not just a time to eat. It was a time to talk and share and laugh together. Mr. Klause especially never seemed to run out of interesting stories to tell.
    â€œOld Brownie got a real close look at a rabbit today,” he said with a grin. “He nearly put his hoof right on the fool thing before it woke up!”
    Little Rose’s eyes widened. “Did the bunny hop away, Papa? Did he?”
    â€œYou just bet he did, Rosy-Posy. You just bet he did,” Mr. Klause assured her. “But that silly old Brownie gave the biggest hop of all. That’s how scared he was of that little bitty bunny.”
    Esther