Shadow Girl Read Free

had made another mess in the kitchen, but at least he’d come home. She was glad of that. He was probably at work now.
    She decided to walk to school by herself. She usually did her best imagining at night in her fort, but some days, especially raw angry days, she used her fantasies to make life different in the daytime, too. She’d pretend she was trekking through the desert or was a secret agent being followed by spies.
    Jules saw Patsy just before reaching the school yard and caught up to her.
    “Do you want to go skating after school?” Patsy asked. “Teresa’s dad finished making the skating rink in their backyard.”
    Teresa’s skating rink. Of all the great things in the world, that is one of the greatest
.
    Teresa’s backyard bordered the park near Jules’s place. She could even walk there with her skates on. “I sure do.” Then she thought more about it. She wanted to invite Patsy over, but she’d left the house in a mess. And she’d have nothing to give her if she was hungry.
    “I’ll get home around three-thirty,” Patsy said, “and can be at Teresa’s about twenty minutes later. Meet me there? We’ll have at least an hour to play.”
    “That’s great,” Jules said, relieved.
    After school, Jules raced home. She took the stairs two at a time to go change.
    Darn! No clean clothes!
    She grabbed a pair of dirty jeans and a sweater from the floor, put them on, made a margarine sandwich, ate it fast, found her skates, and squeezed into them. They were getting too small; her toes were going to hurt something awful, but she didn’t care.
    When she got outside, the air was biting and a light snow was starting to fall. From the back gate of her house, looking across the park, she could see Teresa’s yard.
    As long as it doesn’t snow too much, the rink’ll be fine
.
    When she reached Teresa’s, the rink was better than fine. It was big and wide, and the ice was pretty smooth.
    Heaven!
    She skated across it to the other side, crunched through the snow to Teresa’s back door, and knocked.
    Teresa was just inside, sitting on one of the stairs that led up to the kitchen. She already had a tuque on, and a thick sweater covered the top of her snow pants. Her skates were at the foot of the stairs.
    “I’m almost ready, Jules. Gotta get my jacket and skates on. I’ll be out in a sec.”
    Jules crunched back to the rink, raised her hands to the sky, and stuck her tongue out to catch falling snowflakes.
    Hurray! My own private ice rink!
    Carefully, because there were always a few bumps and cracks, she circled the rink, then skated to the center and spun around. She didn’t know how to twirl like the ice skaters on TV, but she bet she could learn if someone taught her.
    She began to skate faster and faster and faster, round and round the rink. The frosty air whipped by and felt great against her face. She hunched down as she moved, imagining she was a speed skater.
    Teresa came out, and – from a distance – Jules could see Patsy coming down the street next to the park. Patsy was a strong skater, too. Teresa was no match for them, even though she had her own rink. But Teresa didn’t seem to care, and why should she? They played all kinds of games, and you didn’t have to be a fast skater to be good at them.
    Later, a couple of kids from the neighborhood came over, and they all started to play ice tag.Everyone shrieked and laughed as they tried to get away from the person who was “it.” They bumped into each other and fell down. Or, even better, they fell when they were going really fast and skidded on their backsides across the ice into a snowbank.
    Jules laughed until her stomach was sore. She didn’t want the skating to end. But it got too dark, and they started bumping into each other – not even on purpose.
    “Teresa! Teresa!” her mom called out. “Supper!”
    Teresa told Jules and Patsy they could skate on the rink as long as they liked.
    “I can’t feel my toes, Jules,” Patsy said