Shadow Girl Read Free Page B

Another gray day outside.
    Brrr. This room is freezing
.
    Jules got up and dressed quickly.
    Friday the thirteenth. Yikes. But it’s payday and Dad’s going shopping. There’ll be food in the fridge! And maybe he’ll buy me a Christmas present
.
    It wasn’t often Jules woke up feeling so good.
    She washed her face and combed her straggly brown hair. Jules often wished it could be dark red or black – something dramatic. She went downstairs to the kitchen. Her dad was already gone.
    No milk. No bread, even. How am I going to make breakfast? Or lunch?
    She heated up the leftover spaghetti on the stove. If she ate a big enough breakfast, it wouldn’t be so hard to miss lunch. She filled her stomach as muchas she could bear, cleaned up the kitchen, and got ready for school.
    She was going to walk with Patsy today. They’d plan the weekend. Maybe they’d go skating at Teresa’s again or, even better, go to the plaza and play “Pretend” – pretend to buy this or that, pretend to be this or that person.
    Patsy was slow getting ready, and they had to run most of the way to school, which was hard to do because the sidewalks were slippery. It was fun, though – the funnest part of the day.
    At lunch, despite the big spaghetti breakfast, Jules was hungry all over again, but she had to pretend she wasn’t. She went outside and watched some of the kids go home, the ones who lived nearby.
    Will their mom or dad be there? Will there be food in the fridge or cupboards? Will they make the same kind of meal I do?
    It was hard to keep warm, just standing and waiting, and it seemed a long time before the rest of the kids came outside. Some were holding cookies or an apple or orange. Jules watched them eat and imagined the taste of the food in her own mouth. She couldn’t help it.
    Tonight Dad goes shopping, and maybe he’ll buy a treat
. That thought made her happy.
    After school, Jules got to Zellers in record time. She bypassed the candy section – her stomach was too growly – and went straight for the dolls. Hers wasstill on display, which meant she could play with it.
    She’d told her dad the name of the doll she wanted way back in October, and over and over again since then. She’d told him the price, too.
    I hope he remembers. I don’t want anything else for Christmas
.
    “You’re getting too old to play with dolls, aren’t you?” he’d said last week.
    “No, I’m not, Dad. Lots of my friends still do.”
    He looked like he didn’t believe her, but she didn’t know how to convince him. She’d thought about asking for something else, a book maybe. She loved to read.
    But once you’re finished a book, that’s it. With a doll, you can play and play and play. It becomes a friend. Something to love
.
    Mrs. Adamson came over to where Jules was standing. “Hi, Jules. How’re you doing?”
    “Okay.” Jules smiled shyly.
    “You love that doll, don’t you?”
    Jules nodded.
    “I wish I’d had one like it when I was small.”
    “Really?” Jules looked at the expression on Mrs. Adamson’s face to see if she was being phony.
    “The few I did get I managed to keep, though. I still love them.”
    Jules wanted to say that she’d kept her dolls from many years ago, too – but she had only a couple left, and they were in pretty bad shape. When she was little, she liked to experiment with their hair and tryto figure out how the leg and arm joints worked by pulling them off. Or she’d make the dolls go on wild outdoor adventures they often didn’t survive. But she wasn’t like that now.
    I’m going to take care of this one if I get it. And I’ll take it with me if we move again. I’ve lost too much
.
    Mrs. Adamson talked to her a lot that day, in between customers. It was hard to know what to say back, but that didn’t seem to bother Mrs. Adamson. She talked about any darn thing, and she answered Jules as if she was really listening.
    “It’s great working in the toy department because I can get lots