Also Known As Harper Read Free

Three
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    SARAH LYNN NEWHART leaned back against the chain-link fence next to the school. She had her arms bent out to her sides like chicken wings, and she had a good backward bounce going on the fence.
    â€œIt’s about time!” She gave one last bounce and pushed herself up to a stand. Then she moved in to her usual five inches away from my face. That Sarah Lynn was a close talker. It ran in her family.
    â€œYou oversleep or something?” I could feel the little bursts of her breath on my chin. “Bell’s going to ring in about five minutes.”
    I took a half a step back. “Hemingway wouldn’t get out from under my feet. He wouldn’t let me leave until I made a sling for his arm.”
    â€œHe break his arm?” She reached behind her and pulled a blue rolled-up paper out of a diamond link in the fence.
    I shook my head. “You know Hem. The things he wants most in this world are a big white cast and a pair of crutches.”
    She held the blue paper out to me. “Hot off the press. I grabbed you one from Mrs. Rodriguez’s desk before Winnie Rae Early snapped them all up for herself.”
    I unrolled the paper, and my stomach got the prickly churns.
    â€œIt’s just like last year.” I sat down on the bottom of the playground slide and smoothed the paper open over my legs.
    She shrugged. “Just like last year?”
    I nodded. “The paper. It’s exactly the same. Word for word.”
    I had memorized every letter of that paper last year, I had been so excited about it. And just then the words from the blue paper came into my mind before my eyes had even gotten to them. I was going to get another chance to read my poems, and I could feel that same tingly feeling in the front of my head that Ialways got when my words arranged themselves into a poem or a story.
    But it was hard to push away the memory of Daddy sitting at the kitchen table with the whiskey poisoning the air around him.
You’re lazy with a pen, Harper Lee. Being sloppy with your words is the worst kind of lazy. If you expect me to sign my name to this sort of garbage, you got another think coming.
And then he’d put the tip of his pen on top of the “P” on the Whaley County Poetry Contest permission slip, like he might be getting ready to sign his name, anyway. But the tip of his pen had pressed down harder, and hadn’t let up until it had made a big crooked “X” over the front of my permission slip and edged over onto one of my poems.
    I tried to remind myself that Daddy and his green-ink pen weren’t anywhere near me anymore.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Harper Lee?” Sarah Lynn, who was crouched down by the slide, moved in so her nose was practically touching mine.
    I shrugged. “Nothing. Just thinking about the poems I’ve been working on.” But I couldn’t push that voice out of my head. It made me feel like Daddy was back with us again. He had always tried to make my poems shrivel up and seem like theyweren’t anything special. Nothing that you’d read out loud at a poetry contest.
    I scooted back and put the blue paper in my backpack, trying to remember his words couldn’t reach me. “Maybe you could come over and we could work on our poems this afternoon.”
    â€œHuh-uh.” She shook her head. “You know we can just be school friends.”
    A school friend was like a secret you could never share with anyone. I wanted a real best friend.
    â€œMy daddy hasn’t even lived at our house for a good solid year now,” I reminded her.
    She shook her head again, slow and hard with each word. “Mama says no way am I to go to your house ever again. I’m not even allowed on your street.” She raised her eyebrows. “For heaven’s sake, Harper Lee. I’m not even supposed to be talking to you at school.”
    If I had done something wrong, it would be so easy. I could say I was