Blow Out the Moon Read Free Page B

about a box? There are plenty of those lying around!”
    “A box going down stairs with people in it would be hard to control,” Henry said. “And dangerous, too.”
    He looked at Neil kind of disapprovingly.
    “I haven’t actually done it,” Neil said.
    I still wanted to try it, but no one else did, and Henry kept saying more and more reasons against it. Finally I said, “Oh, all right! What about Sardines?”
    “What’s that?” Neil said eagerly, as though he thought it was going to be something exciting.
    “Someone hides … when you find him, you get into the hiding place, too — IF you can do it without anyone else seeing you,” I said, looking at Emmy. Once, when Peg was It, Emmy held out her arms and shouted “Peggy!” as soon as she saw her — right in front of all of us, even though no one else had seen Peggy! It was kind of funny, but still.
    “That was when I was only five,” Emmy said.
    When it was my turn to hide, I ran, quietly, to the big barrel filled with crumpled-up paper I’d seen in the dining room. I boosted myself up with my arms (the way I do when I jump onto the kitchen counter), and then it was easy to lower my legs in quietly, so the paper wouldn’t rustle.
    I curled up like a cat; all I could see was the ceiling and the sides of the barrel. I could hear the others tramping around, and laughing and yelling. Something fell over with a loud crash.
    Then I heard quick footsteps in the dining room. I looked up — and saw my mother staring down at me.
    “Honestly, Libby!” she said. “No! No! Don’t move!”
    She grabbed me by one shoulder and one knee so hard that it hurt, and swung me out of the barrel and up into the air. Then she let go of me, fast — my feet banged the floor.
    “You are the limit,” she said. “Can’t you ever be careful of anything?”
    “But — what did I do?”
    She just looked at me.
    “Was there something in the barrel besides paper?” I said.
    “The wildflower breakfast set.”

    From the wildflower breakfast set.
    I knew the one she meant. She put her hand in the barrel and took out a big ball of paper and held it in both hands. Without looking at me, she said, “This china was my grandmother’s. I’ve never broken even one teacup handle.”
    Henry, Neil, and Emmy ran in. They stopped when they saw our mother and stood in the doorway staring at her with their mouths hanging open. Henry and Emmy know that our mother doesn’t yell and doesn’t hit and doesn’t get mad. She wasn’t yelling but she really was mad, everyone could see that.
    “If ONE THING in that china barrel is broken —” She stopped; I waited, but she didn’t say anything else.
    “What?” I said. “What will happen?”
    She didn’t say anything.
    “IS anything broken?” I said.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well can’t you look?” I said — I hate waiting for punishments, I’d rather just get it over with.
    She didn’t answer me; she just looked at the ball of paper in her hands — it was probably one of the china pieces.
    “If anything is broken there’s nothing I can do about it now,” she said finally. She put the china piece (whatever it was) back in the barrel, very gently, without looking at me at all.
    “But then when will I find out what my punishment is going to be?”
    “You’ll just have to wait until we come back from England and I unpack this barrel,” she said, and went back to the living room.
    Her grandmother gave her the breakfast set because she liked it so much, and she always washes it by hand, not in the dishwasher. Each piece has flowers painted on it, and she says they’re realistic — that’s one reason she liked them so much when she was a child. She liked flowers and china and dolls and things like that when she was a little girl. She wasn’t a tomboy like me.
    Slowly, I walked to the living room door to tell my mother I was sorry — she had looked so sad, and it was a pretty stupid thing to have done. But my mother’s