Free Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo Page A

missed Louisiana. She missed Beverly Tapinski.
    She had another terrible thought: Where had Mrs. Borkowski’s soul gone?
    Where was it?
    Raymie closed her eyes and saw a gigantic seabird fly by: its wings were massive — huge and dark. They didn’t look like angel wings at all.
    “Mrs. Borkowski?” she whispered.
    “What’s that, honey?” said Mrs. Sylvester.
    “Mrs. Borkowski,” said Raymie, louder.
    “I don’t know who Mrs. Borkowski is, dear,” said Mrs. Sylvester. “This is Mrs. Sylvester. And everything is going to be fine, just fine.”
    “Okay,” said Raymie.
    Suddenly, it was hard to breathe.
    Mrs. Borkowski was dead.
    Mrs. Borkowski was dead!
    Phhhhtttt.
    Raymie’s mother did not talk on the way to the memorial service. She sat behind the wheel of the car exactly the same way she sat on the couch, staring straight ahead, grim-faced.
    The sun was shining very brightly, but the whole world looked gray, as if everything had faded overnight.
    They drove past Central Florida Tire. There was a gigantic banner in the window of the store that said, “YOU could become Little Miss Central Florida Tire 1975!”
    Raymie read the words and was alarmed to discover that they didn’t make any sense to her.
    Become Little Miss Central Florida Tire? What did that mean? The words promised her nothing.
    Raymie looked down at Florence Nightingale. She had brought the book with her because it hadn’t seemed like a good idea to leave it behind.
    “What’s with the book?” said her mother, still staring straight ahead.
    “It’s a library book,” said Raymie.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “It’s about Florence Nightingale. She was a nurse. She walked a bright and shining path.”
    “Good for her.”
    Raymie looked down at the book. She stared at Florence Nightingale’s lamp. She was holding it up high over her head. It almost looked like she was carrying a star.
    “Do you think that if you were in a deep hole in the ground and it was daylight and you looked up out of the deep hole, at the sky, you could see stars, even though it was daylight and the sun was out?”
    “What?” said her mother. “No. What are you talking about?”
    Raymie didn’t know if she believed it either, but she wanted to believe it. She wanted it to be true.
    “Never mind,” she said to her mother. And they drove the rest of the way to the Finch Auditorium in silence.

The Finch Auditorium floor was composed of green and white tiles. For as long as she could remember, Raymie had walked only on the green tiles. Someone had told her that stepping on the white ones was bad luck. Who? She couldn’t remember.
    There was a stage at the front of the auditorium. The stage had a piano on it and red velvet curtains that were always open. Raymie had never seen the curtains closed.
    In the center of the auditorium, there was a long table. The table was covered in food, and there were people standing around it talking.
    Raymie kept her right foot on a green square and her left foot on a green square and held herself very still. An adult passed by and patted her on the head.
    Someone said, “I think it’s mayonnaise, but I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell at these things.”
    Someone else said, “She was a very
interesting
woman.”
    Somebody laughed. And Raymie realized that she would never hear Mrs. Borkowski laugh again.
    Raymie’s father had always said that Mrs. Borkowski’s laugh sounded like a horse in distress. But Raymie liked it. She liked how Mrs. Borkowski threw back her head and opened her mouth wide and whinnied when something was funny. She liked how you could see all of her teeth when she laughed. She liked how Mrs. Borkowski smelled like mothballs. She liked how Mrs. Borkowski said “Phhhhtttt.” She liked how she talked about people’s souls. Nobody else Raymie had ever met talked about souls.
    Raymie’s mother was standing next to someone who was holding a shiny black purse close to her chest. Her mother was talking, and the woman