Free The Very Little Princess: Zoey's Story by Marion Dane Bauer Page A

so small, she said, they rolled the sidewalks up at night. (Zoey thought about that for a long time, sidewalks rolled up like rugs to leave room for dancing.) About the house she’d grown up in … bigger than any apartment Zoey had ever seen. About the room she’d grown up in … “Pink enough even for you, Zoey!” her mother added.
    But as the ribbon of road unwound and unwound, her mom gradually unwound, too, until finally she went still. After her mother went still, Zoey couldn’t think of anything to say about the town and the house and the room and the grandmother she had never seen, so she was still, too. And for the rest of the way, theydrove in silence, except for the sounds Zoey’s tummy began to make when lunchtime came and went and they didn’t stop. (Sometimes, she knew, her mom just didn’t get hungry.)

    Zoey quit looking for signs of a Pizza Hut or McDonald’s when they turned onto a gravel road.
    Theirs was the only car on the gravel road, and the dust billowed behind them like smoke.
    When Zoey looked back, she wondered, just for a moment, if the world she knew—their apartment, her school, her friends, all of it—was burning away in that smoke.
    But then she told herself she was being foolish.
    Finally a small town came into view, and they drove through it slowly. The street and thegrocery store and the corner café and the white church with a stubby steeple were quiet, just as quiet as the inside of the car. And when her mom stopped in front of a tall yellow house surrounded by a grassy yard, the house looked quiet, too.
    Lilacs grew along the edges of the yard, but the few blossoms remaining had gone papery and brown. Zoey had lived all her life in one apartment or another, though she had often dreamed of a house surrounded by lilacs. In her dream, however, the blooms were fresh and sweet.
    Zoey and her mother stepped out of the car and into the sunny afternoon. It smelled of grass and of something else Zoey couldn’t name, something she didn’t smell in the city. Perhaps it was the earth itself. Whatever it was, it smelled good.
    Zoey’s mother put a hand in the middle ofZoey’s back and pressed her along the stone walk and up the porch steps. A wicker rocking chair sat alone on the porch. Zoey looked for a swing, but there was none. That was something else she had always dreamed of … a porch with a swing.
    “Knock,” her mother said gently when they’d stepped up onto the porch. Zoey wondered why her mother didn’t do it herself, but she lifted her hand to obey.
    Before her knuckles even touched the wood, though, the door swung open.
    And there stood a woman she had never seen before. Not even in a picture. But Zoey knew instantly who she was. This had to be her very own grandmother.

Chapter 2
A Single Tear
    The woman looked like Zoey’s mother and not like Zoey’s mother at the same time. She had the same dark, fiercely curled hair, though hers was touched with gray. She even had the same freckles. But while Zoey’s mother was all flat planes and sharp corners, her grandmother was round and pillowy.
    “You must be Zoey.” The name came out soft, despite the buzz of the Z. Zoey’s grandmother said it as though she liked the shape of Zoey’s name in her mouth.
    “Hello …” Zoey stopped. Should she call her Granny? That’s what her best friend, Molly, called her grandmother. “I guess I don’t know what to call you,” Zoey admitted.
    “I don’t know, either,” her grandmother said. She looked past Zoey to her mother as she spoke, and her gaze sharpened. “Since your mother has never thought it worthwhile to bring you to see me until now, maybe you should just call me Hazel.”
    “Now, Mother,” Zoey’s mom scolded in a low voice. “Don’t be like that.”
    Zoey looked from her grandmother to her mother, then back to her grandmother again. Clearly there was something going on between the two that she didn’t understand.
    When Hazel’s gaze returned to Zoey,