Also Known As Harper Read Free Page B

like she was getting ready to come at me.
    I leaned back and whispered to Sarah Lynn, “How Mrs. Early gets down low to scrub those motel toilet bowls and wipe out the tubs is beyond me.”
    Sarah Lynn giggled and nudged me up the steps to the main hallway.
    I breathed deep and waited for the school smell to creep in. I didn’t feel this way anywhere else. From the first time I walked through the kindergarten doors, I’d sniffed out the pencil sharpener and the stacks of new paper and I’d felt every part of my body relax.
    I sat down at my desk and took out my morning journal. My pencil hardly needed any direction. I’d had something in my head since yesterday, and my pencil was practically moving on its own.
    I was thinking I might like to add a short story to my poetry collection. It could maybe give me an edge over the competition. Something a little different. A little longer.
    Mrs. Rodriguez walked by and put her hand on my shoulder. “Nice job on your essay, Harper.” When she smiled she had a big space between her top front teeth. Sometimes you could hear a quiet whistle coming through. “You’ve got a special gift for words.”
    She set the essay down in the corner of my desk and ran her hand over my cover sketch of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. “You remind me of Eleanor, you know. You’re strong and creative, just like she was.”
    I smiled at her; I did feel like that when I was breathing in those school smells. It was a good thing I took a deep whiff that morning, because it turned out I was going to need some extra to tide me over for a while.

 
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Chapter Four
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    I DIDN ’ T KNOW how Winnie Rae had done it with all her sniffing and wheezing, but she managed to get a good block ahead of me on the way home from school. Which meant she’d had a good block’s worth of time to see everything before I did.
    She spun herself around like a runway model and wasted no time in coming back to report it all to me. She stopped in front of me with her hip cocked to one side and one hand resting on the beginnings of a fat roll. “You’re lucky it didn’t rain today, Harper Lee Morgan,” she said, “because your entire house is out on your front lawn.” She had her braggy look about her, where her top lip turns up on one side.
    It was easy for the mind to play tricks on a person when they were down on their luck, especially if that person was you. And my mind was thinking howmaybe all that stuff piled around on the lawn belonged to somebody else—the Earlys, maybe. But my eyes were telling me different, due to the fact that Hemingway was sitting in the middle of one of the smaller piles, holding the tiny peach sweater up by one of its fluffy baby arms.
    â€œI found it at the bottom, Harper Lee,” he said. His eyes were all shiny and he looked as if he was getting ready to let loose with a good cry. “But I brushed it off real clean and I didn’t let any of it touch the ground again.”
    â€œGood job, Hem.” I felt my stomach get hollow and dry.
    I knew that sweater belonged to Flannery, the baby that almost was. She didn’t quite make it. Mama says she never even opened her eyes. I knew for a fact, if she would have opened just one of her eyes and seen Mama’s beautiful smile, she might have opened the other one and hung around for a while.
    â€œGive it here, please,” I said, “before Mama sees it.”
    I found the red apple crate with my poems and stories in it and tucked Flannery’s little sweater deep down into the side. It made my stomach feel better for a second, thinking that Flannery and my stories could take care of each other.
    â€œYou better get started, Harper Lee.” Winnie Rae swept her hand in a wide arc in front of her. “You got a whole lot of mess to clean up and no house to put it in.”
    My eyes must have scared her, because she ran right