Free An Unlikely Friendship by Ann Rinaldi

then one evening at supper I looked up from pushing my eggs around on my plate to see them looking at me oddly.
    "Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked, only to realize that others at the table would not even meet my gaze. I shivered.
    "Is Grandma all right?"
    "She's fine," Pa answered, "but, Mary dear, two of your school chums from Mrs. Ward's have died."
    I felt such relief that Grandma was all right that I scarce heard him. Then I did hear. "Who?"
    "Emily Houston and Charlotte Wallace."
    "Oh." I stared down at my eggs and biscuits. Emily and Charlotte. We hadn't been close, but still, now they were dead! What had it been like for them? Had they been frightened? I shuddered and it came to me then. Any of us could die. I could die, too.
    I started to cry and got up and went to Pa, who took me on his lap. And nobody, especially not Levi or George, laughed at me. As a matter of fact, they looked most serious.
    There came a pounding on our front door then, and Nelson went to answer it. We heard him saying, "Ain't nobody dead here."
    Pa set me down and went into the hallway. I was right behind him. So were Levi and George and Ann.
    It was Old Sol, the town gravedigger. He was short and squat. Behind him in our drive was his donkey harnessed to his dead cart. "I needs to see Mr. Todd," he said.
    "What is it?" Pa asked.
    "Sir, I'm outa coffins. I got no more. So I'm askin' at all the houses if the people will go to their attics and find what boxes and chests they got and donate 'em."
    "Fine. We'll do that," Pa said.
    "I'm runnin' outa space in the church cemeteries. Gonna have to start usin' that trench in the new graveyard on the corner of Main and Limestone."
    Main and Limestone! A block from our new house. Levi nudged me.
    "You do what you have to do," Pa told him. "I'll have some chests out here for you tomorrow."
    They closed the door and Pa turned to us. "It'll give you children something to do tomorrow," he said. "Go to the attic, select the biggest chests, and empty them. Nelson will bring them down to put out front."
    We nodded, saying nothing. We were stunned, I think, for since Ma died we were never allowed in the attic. In the attic were her things, and Pa and Betsy didn't want us up there, poring over them and getting all cast down.
    Now he was allowing us up there.
    "Is that wise?" Betsy asked from the background.
    "We're moving soon," Pa told her. "All those things have got to be gone through sooner or later."

    T HE NEXT MORNING after breakfast Levi, Ann, and I made ready to go to the attic. Halfway up the stairs Levi turned to George who stood at the bottom.
    "You coming?" he asked.
    I saw the indecision on George's face. "Pa said I don't have to if I don't want."
    "Come on." Levi extended his hand. "You and I'll go through Pa's things. All that stuff from the war. Let the girls do the rest."
    So we four went to the attic. I was trembling with anticipation. How much of Ma's things had Pa saved? And why hadn't he allowed Betsy to convince him to throw them away?
    The boys weren't interested in Ma's things. There was a lot of Pa's old stuff to be gone through from the war back in 1812. One chest was labeled LEXINGTON LIGHT ARTILLERY , and Levi and George couldn't wait to get their hands on it.
    "You shouldn't be handling those knives and haversacks and guns." Ann was starting to sound more and more like Betsy every day.
    As for me, I was already starting to open a chest of Ma's things.
    "If it isn't big enough to hold a body, don't bother with it," Levi said with his wicked sense of humor.
    I raised the lid of the chest and gasped. Here was everything I imagined as it would be. There were petticoats, silk dresses, shawls, even embroidered aprons. I touched each article reverently.
    "Come on, get it out. We don't have all day. You know Pa wants Nelson to bring the chests downstairs by this afternoon," Ann said.
    "These are Ma's things, Ann," I told her. Across the attic I saw George looking at me as I raised a