Hostage Read Free Page B

them overnight and he might not know until morning whether they’d pull through or not, so we went home feeling pretty glum about thewhole thing. I didn’t envy Jeff having to report to the Andersons that not only had their house been robbed but that their dogs were dead.
    That was definitely something worth praying about. I did, all the way home.
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    Jeff called the vet first thing in the morning and was told that both dogs were doing better and that the vet thought they’d be all right. I didn’t know if my prayers had helped, but I thought they must have; both Mickey and Henry had looked as if they were already dead when we’d delivered them to the veterinary hospital.
    Sometimes I’d wished that we were home schooled, like the Anderson kids, so that we could take vacations any time of year. Now I was glad they were still in Boston, so we didn’t have to face them immediately. At least by the time they got home their pets would be perfectly all right again.
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    We weren’t going to get any vacation this summer, it seemed, when our school was finally over. Some people think that school principalshave long vacations from their work, with nothing to do. That sure wasn’t true of Dad. He had so many things to attend to at school, even when it wasn’t in session, that we didn’t see him much more than during the school year. There were committees to meet with, new teachers to be interviewed and hired, supervising of maintenance of the grounds and buildings, and working with the group trying to persuade the public that we needed to pass a bond issue for a new science lab.
    And this year we had to get ready to move, too. The people who bought our house didn’t need it until fall. Even so, when my parents signed the papers to buy the new house, Mom had hoped we’d be able to move in long before school started again. But things kept happening to put off the moving date.
    Even when the house seemed finished, there were problems. First the contractor couldn’t seem to get all the interior painting finished. Everybody agreed that it would be much more difficult to do with our furniture moved in, so we had to wait on that. Then the carpet Mom wanted in the living room was outof stock in the color she’d asked for. So we had to wait for that. Then the man who was supposed to install the appliances was in a car accident and broke several bones. They couldn’t find anyone else in his company to replace him, so we waited most of the rest of the summer for his bones to heal.
    Dad didn’t care much one way or the other when we moved, as long as nobody bothered him to do anything about it. Mom said it would be much easier if we got in and settled before school opened, and she was frustrated when people kept promising things would be ready at a certain time and then they weren’t.
    We were all ready to move. I was eager to go because I hated sharing a room with Jodie. I’d have a room to myself in the new house, and Mom had let me select my own colors.
    Jodie is the beauty of the family. She is fussy about everything around her being beautiful, too. Three of my aunts had gone together to get her the bedspreads and curtains and everything that went with them for her ninth birthday. Unfortunately, I got to “enjoy” them, too. Ruffled pink and whitechecks, with embroidered rosebuds. I felt as out of place in that room as a kumquat in a bouquet of roses.
    Jodie, of course, looked perfect in that delicate setting. And she kept the room perfectly in order. Everything I did was wrong, from leaving my orange sweater lying where it clashed with the pink and white checks to piling books on the elegant white dresser or nightstand. And instead of a decent reading lamp, I had this cute little deal that wouldn’t take more than a sixty-watt bulb, with a ruffled