Free Dandelion Summer by Lisa Wingate Page A

you gonna show me where the kitchen is?” I called after him, but he didn’t answer. “Guess not.”
    I stood there for a few minutes, waiting to see if he’d come back. When he didn’t, I slid my backpack down and set it on the tile. The zipper hung open where it was broke, and I could see the Someday Book inside. I’d been carrying it with me since I got it out from under the bed. It was mine, after all, and even though the ideas in it seemed stupid now— someday I’m gonna fly an airplane; someday I’m gonna have a horse; someday I’m gonna have a big bedroom with a roof thing over the bed —it was still kind of interesting, looking back at what you dreamed about in the seventh grade. Besides, if Mama found it around our place, I’d be dead for sure, because she’d know I’d been in her box.
    I wandered through the downstairs, checking out the hallway to the left. A couple bedrooms and bathrooms, and a little room with lots of bookshelves and windows, some sofas at one end, and an old pool table at the other. There were photos in the hall, the old kind with the colors faded—a little girl running in the waves on a beach, a boy playing in the sand under a palm tree, a family standing on the deck of a sailboat, smiling for the camera. Mom, dad, two kids. The perfect postcard. The sailboat was high-dollar, and the man looked enough like J. Norman that I figured out who it was. He had red hair when he was young. He wasn’t a bad-looking dude—nothing like the prune-faced guy who’d just opened the door. But the man in the picture didn’t look happy, either. The woman and the little girl and the boy were all focused on the camera, but the man was looking off a bit, like he’d pasted on a smile for the picture, but his mind wasn’t in it. I stared at it and thought, If somebody put me on a boat like that, my mind wouldn’t be anyplace else. That looked like the good life, right there.
    I wandered on past some more baby pictures and high school graduation pictures, and pictures of J. Norman and his wife. They’d gone on trips all over the world—the Great Wall of China, some pyramids like in Egypt, a big ship out in the ocean, a castle someplace. His wife had on pretty dresses in some of the old pictures, and hats to match, and little white gloves. She was as classy as an old-time movie star, with a big white smile, and red lipstick, and dark hair piled high on her head. From where I was standing, the life in those pictures was a fairy tale.
    I left the photos and went back up the hall and across the entryway, past the stairs. I could hear J. Norman up there making noise in one of the rooms. He had a TV on loud, and drawers and cabinets were slamming. Mama’d told me I was supposed to keep an eye on him, and that his daughter didn’t want him upstairs, but what was I supposed to do about it—go up there and carry the man down like a big ol’ baby? He was a grown-up, after all, and if he felt good enough to be smacking drawers around, he couldn’t be in too bad shape.
    Then I thought, Yeah, what if he fell down or something, and that’s what all the racket up there is about? I remembered when Mrs. Lora came home from the hospital the first time. The night she got back, she fell in the bathroom and was stuck beside the toilet. I had to break the door lock to get in there and help her out.
    Maybe I should check on Mr. J. Norman Grouchface Smartmouth Alvord. . . .
    Then again, if he saw me, he’d probably bite my head off for bothering him. The kitchen was a safer place, since that’s where I told him I’d be. . . .
    I tiptoed up a couple steps and listened, anyway. He was talking to someone up there . . . or talking to himself. Anyway, he wasn’t yelling for help, and so I decided he wasn’t dying or anything. I left him be and went through the rest of the downstairs. There were so many rooms there, you could get lost. I liked the front room with flowered sofas and lace curtains and a cabinet full