Winter Sky Read Free

over. Wool from a jacket? Torn from a sleeve? She tucked it in her pocket, even though it was sopping wet.
    She heard a rustle, a scraping against the wood, and froze. It came again, that whisper of sound. She peered between the boards. Someone was in there. A dark figure crouched on the floor.
    Could he see her?
    She turned, sliding, tripping over her boots, not caring about the noise she made. She had to get out of there. She scrambled through the snow until she reached the street. Safe.
    Head down against the wind, she headed for the firehouse and dinner, talking herself out of being afraid. Imagination!
Probably no one in the shed. A fire from last summer, or the summer before
.
    Besides, she was starving. The cafeteria lunch today, Meat Surprise, had tasted like leftover dog food. Only the cup of pale applesauce had been any good.
    She’d thrown half of it away, while Mrs. W, the kitchen helper, scarfed down her third portion of the gray meat. “Delicious, Siria, right?”
    “A surprise,” she’d answered, not wanting to hurt her feelings.
    Siria crossed the avenue now. The stray dog she’d seen in the empty apartment darted into the street against the traffic. Horns blared and a truck screeched, just missing him. Siria, hand to her mouth, watched as he reached the other side of the street, his chain dragging through a snowdrift.
    It was only another block to the firehouse, which was squeezed between two high buildings, an apartment house and a dry-goods store that had closed years ago. The shiny red doors were high and wide for the trucks to move in and out.
    Siria ran her fingers along the side of the ladder truck just inside, Pop’s truck, Number Seventeen. It waited for him, ready to go, while he was home sleeping.
    “Help, guys!” she said as she ripped open the Velcro ties on her jacket. “I need food!”
    “Here she is!” Willie, Pop’s best friend, called toward the kitchen in back.
    By the time Siria had circled the other engines, Danny was pouring her a hot chocolate with foamy cream on top. A plate of hamburgers loaded with tomatoes and onions had already been set on the table for her.
    “You have to keep up your strength, Siria,” Danny said from the stove, raising his spatula. “And you’re at the right place.”
    “True,” Willie said. He loved to eat. He held a fat hamburger in one large hand and a cup of French fries in the other.
    While she ate, Siria tried not to stare at the pencil marks that zigzagged up the back wall. They were bunched together, hardly getting higher.
    Izzy measured her every September. “The wall iscrooked,” she’d said last year, for comfort, when the line was only a tiny bit higher than the year before.
    Siria knew she was a shrimp, the smallest kid in her class, and if you didn’t count the four or five babies in her building, she was the shortest there, too, floors one to seven.
    It was a miserable feeling, looking up at everyone, standing on tiptoe so no one would notice her height.
    “Mom was a peanut, too,” Pop had said once, his eyes soft. “But you should have seen her, Siria. Hands on her hips, not afraid to do what she had to do.” He’d grinned. “And not afraid to tell everyone what she believed!”
    Now Izzy squinted at her. “You’re getting taller, Siria. I can see it with my own good eyes. Catching up to your pop!”
    Izzy was the one who had given Siria the idea of hanging off the closet door every night. That was sort of what Izzy did: she used the firehouse as an exercise room, her wild dark hair swinging, arms reaching up, toes pointed down, face shiny with effort.
    Izzy made everyone happy. On the opposite wall, she’d hung an old calendar that was torn off at July fourteenth. It had a picture of kids diving into a cool blue lake. “Isn’t it fun to pretend it’s summer all year long?” she’d said when she’d hung it up.
    Now Danny reached over Izzy’s shoulder and grabbed an oatmeal cookie. “With five kids at home,”