Free The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars Page A

familiar, a tape-recorded voice.
    He waited, then said, “Go ahead.”
    She did not speak for a moment but continued walking noisily through the weeds.
    “Go ahead.”
    “If you’ll just wait a minute, I’m trying to think how to say this.” The words she wanted to say—I’m sorry—would not come out at all.
    They continued walking in silence and then Joe said, “You know, I was just reading an article about a guru over in India and he hasn’t spoken a word in twenty-eight years. Twenty-eight years and he hasn’t said one word in all that time. And everyone has been waiting all those years to hear what he’s going to say when he finally does speak because it’s supposed to be some great wise word, and I thought about this poor guy sitting there and for twenty-eight years he’s been trying to think of something to say that would be the least bit great and he can’t think of anything and he must be getting really desperate now. And every day it gets worse and worse.”
    “Is there supposed to be some sort of message in that story?”
    “Maybe.”
    She smiled. “Well, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.” She thought again that she was going to start crying and she said to herself, You are nothing but a big soft snail. Snail!
    “That’s all right.”
    “I just found out about Aunt Willie going to see your mother.”
    He shrugged. “She didn’t mean anything by it.”
    “But it was a terrible thing.”
    “It wasn’t all that bad. At least it was different to be accused of something I didn’t do for a change.”
    “But to be called in like that in front of Aunt Willie and Mary’s mother. No, it was terrible.” She turned and walked into the woods.
    “Don’t worry about it. I’m tough. I’m indestructible. I’m like that coyote in ‘Road Runner’ who is always getting flattened and dynamited and crushed and in the next scene is strolling along, completely normal again.”
    “I just acted too hastily. That’s one of my main faults.”
    “I do that too.”
    “Not like me.”
    “Worse probably. Do you remember when we used to get grammar-school report cards, and the grades would be on one part of the card, and on the other side would be personality things the teacher would check, like ‘Does not accept criticism constructively’?”
    Sara smiled. “I always used to get a check on that one,” she said.
    “Who didn’t? And then they had one, ‘Acts impetuously and without consideration for others,’ or something like that, and one year I got a double check on that one.”
    “You didn’t.”
    “Yes, I did. Second grade. Miss McLeod. I remember she told the whole class that this was the first year she had ever had to give double checks to any student, and everyone in the room was scared to open his report card to see if he had got the double checks. And when I opened mine, there they were, two sets of double checks, on acting impetuously and on not accepting criticism, and single checks on everything else.”
    “Were you crushed?”
    “Naturally.”
    “I thought you were so tough and indestructible.”
    “Well, I am”—he paused—“I think.” He pointed to the left. “Let’s go up this way.”
    She agreed with a nod and went ahead of him between the trees.

Chapter Seventeen
    T here was a ravine in the forest, a deep cut in the earth, and Charlie had made his way into it through an early morning fog. By chance, blindly stepping through the fog with his arms outstretched, he had managed to pick the one path that led into the ravine, and when the sun came out and the fog burned away, he could not find the way out.
    All the ravine looked the same in the daylight, the high walls, the masses of weeds and wild berry bushes, the trees. He had wandered around for a while, following the little paths made by dirt washed down from the hillside, but finally he sat down on a log and stared straight ahead without seeing.
    After a while he roused enough to wipe his hands over his cheeks