Free The Right Thing by Amy Conner Page A

waited for the thin cane brandished by a mustachioed man in a top hat. The young women’s faces looked really happy, even though they were obviously in line for what Starr’s father called a whuppin’. This picture shocked my intelligence to a thunderous vacancy.
    Then the gasping stopped.
    Mr. Treeby barked, “Who’s there!”
    Silently backing away from that photograph, I crawled backward in a perfect terror down the dark hall along the cheap runner, my hands and knees stinging with rug burns. Mr. Treeby shouted again. “Who’s there, dammit!” It sounded like he was putting on his pants in a hurry—a zipper rasping, coins falling to the floor.
    â€œGoddammit, Lollie, get down here!”
    I backed around the corner to the entryway, fast. In my haste to get to my feet, I knocked over the majolica umbrella stand. The elephant broke in two when it hit the tile, and clattering umbrellas rolled across the floor like timbers released from a logjam. My hand was on the doorknob when Mrs. Treeby trundled headlong down the stairs in a flapping brown dressing gown, her brow furrowed.
    â€œWhy, Annie—where are you going?” she asked. She was out of breath.
    â€œHome. I, I don’t feel good,” I improvised. Before she could reply, I yanked the door open to the bracing air. A wind skittered through the poplars outside, driving yellow leaves before it.
    â€œLollie, what’s the meaning of this?” Mr. Treeby strode around the corner into the entryway, his hair wild, his pinstriped shirt only half tucked in. His eyes narrowed when he saw me.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, dear?” Mrs. Treeby was lumbering toward me, stepping over the umbrellas with her arms outstretched, her kindly horse face concerned. I leapt down the steps to the sidewalk and landed running.
    â€œPellagra!” I shouted over my shoulder. “I’ve got pellagra!”
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    I ran and ran until I couldn’t run anymore. The four blocks to the Treebys’ house—miles long this morning when I was walking to my date with the playhouse in the basement—were a blur. I slowed to a trot and then walked, holding my ribs against the throb of the stitch in my side. I had to stop to catch my breath. The crow was still perched in the top of the crape myrtle tree. It hopped to a lower branch, and bright, bold eyes seemed to ask, What happened to you?
    I shuddered against the memory of Mr. Treeby’s study and what I’d seen there, sharp as scissors, greasy and sickening as the taste of soapsuds on my tongue. There was no possibility of going home now, no doubt in my mind that within seconds of my escape Lisa’s mother had telephoned both Methyl Ivory and my grandmother. What Mrs. Treeby would say to them was beyond my imagination, but once again my natural badness had undone my best efforts to be good. Big slow tears ran into the corners of my mouth, and I yearned then to be the crow overhead, to spread shining black wings and fly home to my ragged nest in the top of the live oak tree, where crow brothers and sisters would want to hear about my adventures and tell me their own.
    There was no home for me. Instead of turning onto Fairmont, I ran north, around the corner, and down the long block to the end of Gray Street. When I saw the little asbestos-sided rental house, it seemed that I’d been running there all along. It never occurred to me that Starr wouldn’t be home as I punched the doorbell and waited on the cracked cement stoop. My breath returned to normal, my flushed cheeks cooled, and I realized the temperature had dropped again. There was a front pushing through, and I was cold. Rubbing my bare arms’ goose bumps, I rang the doorbell again. Overhead, low clouds scudded across the sky, and a dog barked somewhere, harsh and insistent.
    And then, just as I was ready to give up and walk around the block, back home to the certain doom awaiting me, the door to