Winter Sky Read Free Page B

to pound. What had the book on arson said? Investigate. How had the fire started? She knew that now. Someone had started it with matches.
    She looked at the empty lot, then closed thedoor behind her. Straddling her bike, she headed for home, her mind whirling.
    As she passed Trencher’s, she saw a shadow in the doorway. She jumped, hands shaking, the handlebars wobbling.
    “Sorry,” a voice called. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
    It was only Jason’s friend, Mike. The one with the cool tattoo on the back of his neck.
    Siria raised her hand to wave, then kept going. When she reached her building, she remembered the key to the outside door. It wasn’t around her neck or in her pocket—it was dangling from the hook behind the kitchen door. She’d forgotten it again.
    Almo was still asleep on the couch. It wasn’t a good idea to wake him. He’d tell Pop she was wandering around at night, thrilled with his information.
    She went around to the back, bypassing black plastic garbage bags with hats of snow, and leaned her bike against the fence. The basement door was always open, banging back and forth in the wind. Almo never closed it. What did he care about howling hurricanes, blizzards, or robbers on the loose?
    She steeled herself to go down the ice-covered cement steps and sneak through the basement. Inside, it was almost completely dark. Kids with peashootershad used the lightbulbs for target practice again. Pieces of glass crunched under her feet.
    Something went
bang
almost in front of her and her heart stopped for a second. Only the boiler in the electricity room!
    She passed the laundry room. Half the washing machines didn’t work, and the dryers didn’t let off enough heat to melt an ice cream cone, so most people went across the street to Louie’s Laundromat.
    She remembered that huge dog who’d been in 5-E, the empty apartment. Sometimes he wandered in the open basement door. He might be hiding in the dark. “Gather your wits, Siria,” she whispered; it was something Izzy said.
    She tore through the basement toward the elevator and pressed the button, running in place in case the dog showed up and she had to race in the opposite direction and outside again.
    And there he was! Eyes gleaming, his matted hair and thick tail brushing against the storage bins. But the elevator rumbled to a stop, and she was on her way before he moved. Upstairs, she grasped the apartment doorknob.
    Don’t be locked, please
.
    It turned and she tiptoed inside. The living room was dim, and the only sound was soft music coming from Pop’s bedroom.
    She couldn’t wait to slide into her own bed and pull the quilt over her head.
    But not yet.
    She climbed up on the chair next to her closet door.
Raise those arms. Curl those fingers around the top of the door. Point those toes
.
    Hang there
.
    Stretch!
    It was painful, but she made herself stay pasted to the closet until she counted to one hundred ten, which was a nice round number and maybe would earn her a quarter inch.
    She’d tried Pop’s hand weights the other night but dropped them on her feet, causing angry purple marks across eight toes. Only the pinkies had escaped.
    She finally slid under that warm quilt and tried not to think of the shed, and fire, and that huge dog with greasy fur and curved teeth.
    She burrowed deeper into the quilt. If only she could tell Pop about the fire. But then he’d know she’d been outside at night, wandering around. How angry he’d be.
    Think about the stars instead
.
    Think about the legends Mom collected
.
    Picture them
.
    She took a last look at her star book, then closed her eyes.

    Singuuriq, an Inuit woman, lived in the cold Arctic north. Her little house rested beside a path that wandered from the earth to the moon
.
    She tried to do her work, but people passing by caused a draft that crept into the room, causing her seal-oil lamp to flicker and dance and the flame to turn bluish white
.
    The travelers were weary, thirsty. They