Free Cobwebs by Karen Romano Young Page B

talking?
And if it wasn’t Dad talking to me last night, who was it?
    “What are you doing?” Ned asked, his voice still sleepy.
    Nancy held up the sweater.
    “What’s wrong with the black one?”
    “It’s finished, remember? I was wearing it last night.”
    “Oh.” Ned leaned closer and kissed her on the cheek. “You’ll be so bright in that,” he said.
    “Don’t start with me. Granny thinks I’m too dark in the black one.”
    “Even a spider makes use of camouflage, little egg.”
    Some spiders do. Not me.
Nancy felt cranky. She wanted to be bold, get noticed, be one of those garish bright spiders that stood out fiercely on their webs, even if the purpose was only to make themselves unappetizing to birds. “I want to look big and colorful and scare people,” she said.
    Ned laughed. “Scare who?”
    “People.” The man whose house she’d been to last night. That boy on the dome. Whoever was outside last night.
    Ned tossed the hair out of his eyes and looked at her inquisitively, but she kept her thoughts to herself. “What are you doing today?” he asked. He was pulling on his hobnailed boots, ready for a roofing job. It was Saturday. Nancy had that gold yarn to buy. She’dpromised to see Annette. And she had some questions she wanted to try asking her grandparents.
    “Home,” she said. “Mama.”
    “Is she sleeping?” Ned asked, tying a boot. His hair dangled, hiding his face. Nancy knew the trick.
    “Yes.” She couldn’t lie. Rachel
snored
when she wasn’t with Ned, lay on her stomach spread-eagle on the bed, heavy blankets kicked to the floor, pillow over her head, out like a light, deeply secure.
    “Ah.” Ned looked into Nancy’s eyes, his face pure calm, except for one cheek twitch. Only one. Nancy knew that in fall Rachel had insomnia, walked the floor, plucked at the strings on her loom, ached for Ned. In spring it seemed to Nancy that fall would never come. But this year she sensed some different ache in Rachel, for something else, not Ned.

14
    B oy on the Promenade railing. Blue eyes. No hair.
    “Hey girl, where’s your daddy?”
    Nancy pulled her sweater sleeves down over her hands, clutched them there, felt her palms sweat.
    “Girl, know what you got?”
    Annette shuddered. Her gleaming hair shook. But he wasn’t talking to her. “Keep walking!” she said in Nancy’s ear.
    “Wait,” said Nancy.
    “Got hair like a nest!”
    Nancy whirled at the corner of Pierrepont. “I do not!” she screeched.
    Another surprisingly beautiful smile came out of that gray-blue uglyish face. “I know about your father,” he called teasingly.
    “Oh, why did you answer?” moaned Annette softly, walking on. Nancy just stood there; she let Annette leave her behind.
    “Up high a lot, isn’t he?” the boy asked.
    She wasn’t sure what that meant. “He works on roofs.”
    He laughed. “I’m pretty good on a roof myself.”
    Nancy’s heart thumped. Had it been him?
Are you the Angel?
“What’s your name?” she asked.
    “Dion,” he said. “Remember that.”
    “Dion
what?”
    “My mother’s going to wonder where I am,” Annette said. She was back, Nancy was sorry to note.
Sorry? About Annette?
She pulled herself together. She turned away, went after Annette.
    “Hey girl!”
    Nancy kept going.
Can’t catch me.
    “Didn’t say what
kind
of nest, did I?”
    “Nancy,” hissed Annette. “How does he know ‘your daddy’?”
    Nancy glanced sidelong at Annette, who was justbeing a good friend, just trying to protect her. “He was on the dome in the playground when Dad and I went by last night.”
    The boy sat on the rail behind them, swinging his feet. The space between them yawned. Annette pulled her to the corner and kept demanding in her ear, “Is he following you?
Stalking
you?”
    Nancy pulled away. She would call the boy’s bluff. “My girlfriend thinks you’re the Angel of Brooklyn,” she called across the space.
    “Me?”
    “Yeah.” She took three steps