Where I Want to Be Read Free

mattress molded to the shape of her body. She closed her eyes and pulled the edgeof the linsey-woolsey blanket so that it brushed her chin. A linsey-woolsey blanket was folded at the edge of every bed at Orchard Way. They were famous blankets, knit by Peace Dale’s own textile mills and dyed with walnut shells to mossy greens and browns. During the Civil War, thousands of these blankets had been distributed to Union soldiers.
    “Pretend I’m a soldier,” Jane used to suggest to Lily, “and I’m about to die from frostbite on the battlefield, and you’re a poor factory girl named Hepsbeth, and you find me and cover me with a blanket just in time.”
    Lily had liked that game better. Lily liked to rescue people.
    “How long can I stay?” Jane asked Augusta sleepily.
    “Until you want to go.” Her grandmother’s voice sounded far away.
    Yes, that was a nice answer. Sleep was falling softly over her. “Orchard Way is my only place,” she mumbled. She burrowed deeper, darker, safer.
    Her grandmother didn’t answer, but her fingers continued to trace the length of Jane’s arm. Up and down, up and down. She would not stop until Jane was asleep.

4 — COBWEBS
Lily
    Caleb drops by late. After his own day at the Pool & Paddle Youth Club, he had to work a shift at the Co-op for a friend. But he bangs through the door with his dimpled smile locked in place. His guitar is in one hand, and a bag of something that smells yummy is in the other.
    “You could have called,” I say, wrapping my arms around his neck. My lips touch his throat, his chin, and the tip of his nose. “I’da picked you up. I hate thinking of you walking all this way.”
    “The fastest journey is achieved on foot,” Caleb answers grandly. Thoreau, most likely. Caleb is something of a Thoreau fiend. He lets me reclaim him a few seconds longer. Then he shakes the bag. “You eaten?”
    “No.” The cereal was hours ago. I’m hungry again.
    We set up for a nighttime feast at the picnic table out back. I even light the tea candles and get out the coasters, self-consciously adult without Mom and Dad around. Wetalk about next month and the start of my senior year at North Peace Dale High. I’ve gotten expert at dodging around the subject of what Caleb is planning to do this fall. My standing policy on that is to wait for him to bring it up.
    Instead, I ask him what happened today at the Pool & Paddle, where Caleb teaches swimming. It’s the right job for him, mixing his love of kids with his near-perfect patience.
    “Nothing much. Actually, one of my tadpoles drew me a picture.”
    “Oh, cute! Do you have it? Let me see!”
    Sheepish, Caleb pulls it from his wallet, unfolding it with care, and passes it over. But he knows I’ll like it.
    The picture is of two stick figures. Same height, squiggly spider hands joined and wearing shoes that look like flowerpots. Behind them is a blue blob, which I guess is the pool.
    For Coach Caleb love Sophie
marches in painstaking print across the bottom.
    “Those kids love you. You have such a good heart,” I tell him.
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he answers. He’s shy about compliments.
    “Seriously.” I tweak the pink tip of his ear.
    “Hey, you’re the one who bakes chocolate chip cookies for crazy old ladies.”
    “Mrs. Orndorff’s not crazy, she’s a sweetie pie. Especially if you make her cookies.”
    “Which reminds me.” Caleb reaches up and swipes a couple of plates off the top shelf just as the toaster oven timer pings. “I’m starved.”
    After more than a year of semi-conversion to Caleb’s vegan diet, soy cheese still tastes like soggy paper to me, but it doesn’t stop me from polishing off two veggie burritos. Then I dig out the last lemon Italian ice in the freezer for dessert. We move off the picnic bench to sit on the stoop, sharing a spoon, scraping and passing the carton back and forth as we check out the stars.
    “Lesson?” Caleb suggests.
    “Okay, but, warning—I don’t think