Irish Melody Read Free Page A

she was yanked back and Ippy found Hannah’s braided brown hair in front of him as Hannah twisted Sara around. They were yelling, Ippy knew this because his ears started to hurt, but he was paying attention to the bright purple tie and bit of ribbon Hannah had braided into her hair. It hadn’t been like that before and he found that he liked the sight of it blowing in the breeze. Samson, Christopher, and a few of the other adults came out toward them. They were running and Ippy ducked his head as Samson’s wolf caught sight of him. Submission was respect and respect was required. The yelling stopped abruptly and Ippy tucked his hands into the back of Hannah’s shirt. She reached behind herself, showing him her palms. People were talking, but he didn’t care as he put his fingers against her palms. She didn’t close her hands around his fingers and he’d stopped being afraid that she would. Instead she kept her hands flat and he looked at her braided hair going down her back.
    Ignoring the yelling, even Hannah’s, was hard. But he’d gotten better at it. His mom and dad told him that he couldn’t freak out whenever he wanted to. Hannah had been there. They were at a store and the loudspeaker was broken. It hurt his ears whenever it skipped and garbled the words and he didn’t remember much, but Hannah had told him later that night that he’d gone to the floor and started crying out. His parents hadn’t been happy. That’d been a year ago and he was trying to get better. His mom told him that he was an embarrassment. He knew that was a bad thing and didn’t want to be that for them or for Hannah. He pushed himself into wrapping his hands around her fingers. She didn’t move, but he could see her shoulders shaking.
    Then Sara pushed her back and she ran into Ippy. Suddenly it was as if all the noise in the world was coming at him at once and he screamed to make it stop. He covered his ears and bent down at the waist, trying to be as small as possible as all that noise grabbed at him. There were prickly words, sour words, hot words and all those words coming at him all the time. Then there was Hannah kneeling in front of him with her brown eyes, so pretty, always so pretty, looking up at him from her position below him. But that wasn’t right either. She couldn’t be under him. She was higher than he was in the pack. She shouldn’t have been kneeling in front of him.
    Ippy saw her mouth moving when she turned away from him and he looked over to see Sara yelling at her. At least he thought that she was yelling from how red her face was and how big her mouth was getting. Her dad showed up while she was still yelling and then Samson was pointing wildly. Hannah touched his nose and Ippy looked back at her. She smiled at him and he started to drop his hands, hoping the sounds were over now, but she shook her head and added her hands over his own. He smiled back at her and left his hands where they were. Ippy didn’t think about how long they knelt like that in Samson’s driveway.
    He only focused on her hair, her smile, the fact that she smelled like fish tacos and lime juice just like the kind she got from her favorite Mexican restaurant, and how warm her hands were as they covered his. Not many people could touch him. He could name them all on one hand. But he didn’t ever mind when she did, and sometimes he even liked it. He’d been liking her touch a lot more lately. Her hands were soft, her nails short so that they didn’t dig into his skin when they held hands and she’d painted her nails sometime in the afternoon. Now they were a rainbow of colors. She’d put on gold eyeshadow too. He didn’t like that so much. She looked prettier without make up on.
    Hannah pulled her hands away from his head and he started to drop his hands too, after looking to her for confirmation. She nodded and he put his hands on the driveway between them. Her nails were really pretty. Maybe she could do his, too. Maybe even in