Free Shining On by Lois Lowry Page B

pointed teeth and let out a soundsomewhere between a growl and a hiss. Curved claws, sharp and black, lashed out. Monica snatched her hand away. Blood beaded on her palm, as red as her nail polish.
    “Vicious little brute! They're quite wild, as you can see.”
    “You should get to know his name,” Sadie said under her breath. “Maybe he's touchy about it.”
    “Say what?” Monica looked at her.
    Jules felt the giggles breaking like bubbles in her nose, making her eyes sting.
    “I just asked if you were all right.” Sadie smiled sweetly. “Do you need a Band-Aid? I've got a hankie….”
    “No, thank you. A tissue will do.” Monica fished one out of her bag to staunch the blood and gave a shaky laugh. “We ought to put a notice up.
Beware of the Cat!”
    Jules used the cover of Monica's feeble joke to let out her smothered laughter. Her mirth died quickly as she thought she caught a movement in one of the upper sto-ries, like someone reaching to open a window. She blinked and … there was no one there. Jules smiled as she followed her mother to the stable block.
Definitely
too much imagination.
    “Oh, it really is too much!” Lavinia stamped her foot, although the tiny buttoned boot made no sound as it hit the ground. “We should be down there! It's such a bore to be stuck in the house while Aloysius has all the fun.” Shebeckoned the others over, to share the scene below her, and then had to admonish Jessica for getting too close to the window. She was reaching up to open it!
    “Don't!” she scolded. “Keep away from the window.”
    “Why?” Jessica scowled and her rosebud mouth pursed to a sulk. Lavinia was far too bossy. “They can't see us.”
    “Some
can,” Lavinia replied.
    Jessica skipped away to play with the others. “All the more fun!”
    Sadie threw the card onto the kitchen counter. “I can't be-lieve she couldn't get our names right. I've known her for years!”
    “Is she the one who interviewed you?”
    “No, that was Derek. Didn't even know she was working for the National Trust. Last thing I knew, she was volunteering at the local museum. You do think you'll like it here?” she added, changing the subject. “It's just that it's perfect for me to finish the book, and with our house not ready …”
    After her marriage broke up, Sadie had wanted a complete break. She had accepted a job at Michigan State University, teaching creative writing. Jules had elected to go to America with her. They'd spent a year there and come back in July. Sadie had found a house, but it needed work. They wouldn't be able to move in for months and months.
    “We could always go back to Granny's.”
    “Not another day! Staying with my mother is
not
anoption. She treats me as though I'm still your age.” Sadie sighed. “I'll take that as ‘I don't like it,’ shall I?”
    Jules went over and gave her a hug. “No, don't do that. I'm fine with it. It's just a tiny bit creepy.” Jules felt an un-easiness she could not define. “The house …”
    “Is not creepy!” Sadie hugged her daughter back. “Just different with nobody in it. I'll prove it. Come with me.”
    The wood of the door was weathered silver and opened onto the porch. The Trust had tried to keep a flavor of how the house used to be. It had been owned by an eccentric old lady who had run her own tours: sixpence for children, one shilling for adults.
    “Totally batty, by all accounts,” Jules's mother commented. “Place was inches thick with dust, and totally infested with cats.”
    “What happened to her?”
    “She got too old to manage the place. Gave it to the Trust. Lives in a nursing home in Cheltenham now. Not far from your old junior school.”
    They had lived in Cheltenham before the year in America and, although the house was only about twenty miles away from where they used to live, Jules had never visited it before the summer.
    “It was shut up for a long while after the old lady moved out; then the Trust were doing it up.