Free The Secret Book Club by Ann M. Martin Page B

you’ll go, too, Nikki. You’re a much better student than I am. Talented, too. You have your art. You’ll get a scholarship for sure.”
    â€œI can’t believe you’ll be leaving. Mom and Mae and I will be here by ourselves. That’ll be weird. Just the three of us.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œI won’t be scared, though,” said Nikki, who, even as she spoke the words, was thinking that she might in fact be quite scared. “Bad things don’t usually happen in Camden Falls.”
    â€œWell, don’t get … what’s the word?”
    â€œComplacent?” suggested Nikki.
    â€œSee?” said her brother. “I’m the one going to college, and you’re the one who knows words like complacent . Trust me, seven years from now, you’ll be off to college, too. It will happen somehow. The old bat — I mean, Mrs. DuVane — will help you.” Mrs. DuVane, a wealthy acquaintance of Nikki’s mother,had years earlier, in a blunt and tactless way, taken on the Shermans as what had felt to Nikki and her family like something of a charity project. But over time, she had softened, and Nikki had been grateful for her many kindnesses.
    â€œBy then we might not need Mrs. DuVane anymore,” said Nikki. “Won’t need her money, anyway. If Mom gets the job, we could be on our feet seven years from now.” She sighed. “Seven years. That sounds like such a long time. Imagine me, going to college. I’ll be practically an adult by then.”
    â€œAre you saying I’m not an adult yet?” asked Tobias.
    Nikki laughed. “No. You’re an adult.”
    â€œGetting back to being complacent, though … Seriously, Nikki, I know this is Camden Falls and all, but when I’m gone, you and Mom and Mae have to be careful about locking the house at night —”
    â€œYou mean, because we’ll be three girls alone way out in the country?”
    â€œNikki.”
    â€œWe’re going to be careful. I promise.”
    â€œYou’d better be. Because if you’re not, I’m going to come home from school.”
    â€œTobias, we can take care of ourselves.”
    â€œI know you can.”
    When Nikki imagined lying in her bed, though, in the darkened Sherman house, her brother miles andmiles away, she felt an uncomfortable hollowness in her chest, the same hollowness she used to feel sitting alone on the school bus, separated from her laughing classmates by both inches and miles.
    Â 
    Nikki spent the long, lazy afternoon by herself, waiting for her mother to come home. Tobias had left for his part-time job and Mae was at day care. Nikki was unaccustomed to so much time alone. She took her copy of Roll of Thunder onto the stoop, squatted down, and leaned against the wall of her house, stretching her skinny legs in front of her. Paw-Paw joined her, curling onto his side and pressing his back hotly against Nikki’s bare leg. Nikki couldn’t bring herself to move him.
    She opened the book. She had stopped reading the night before at the end of Chapter Nine, a very exciting point in the story. Nikki hadn’t wanted to stop, but the book had kept slipping from her hands, and she had finally realized that, exciting as the story was, she had read the last paragraph three or four times. Reluctantly, she had turned off her reading lamp. Now she turned to the tenth chapter, marked with a piece of cream-colored cardboard on which Mae had written vertically, NIKKI/SISTER/BEST FREIND. The bookmark had been Mae’s birthday present to Nikki.
    Nikki read. And read and read. She reached thelast sentences of the book: I cried for T.J. For T.J. and the land .
    Nikki felt her own tears falling, and Paw-Paw looked up at her in alarm, then struggled to his feet and licked Nikki’s face.
    â€œIt’s okay, Paw-Paw,” said Nikki.
    She sat motionless on the stoop and thought about what Flora had said the