Free The Heroines by Eileen Favorite Page A

pulled in her lips and set her bright eyes on me. “You’re practically my best friend.”
    I felt flattered and oddly put off by this title. I was a little girl! When I didn’t say anything, Franny said, “I understand. Your mother. You have to…answer. But are you sure you’re okay alone? See, I hate to make you walk home without me, buddy, but I really feel on the verge of something.”
    “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.” My voice had softened, I was sorry to have been angry with the only grown-up Heroine who’d ever noticed me. “But promise you’ll come back tonight. Mother says the woods are dangerous at night.”
    “Absolutely.” Franny embraced me, and I felt the dampness of her dress, her bony ribs. I’d never actually touched a Heroine before, and she felt frail to me, skinny and short though I was. Her sharp sweat smelled like craziness itself, and even as I pulled away, she held the hug a second or two longer than I liked.
    “You’re the best,” she whispered, squeezing my hands.
    “See you later!” I ran up the embankment and back onto the tracks, relieved to get away from her. How quickly things had taken a weird turn. My instincts to retreat toward home were deeply ingrained, as was my fear of the woods. My growing suspicion that Franny was a little bit off unnerved me.
    The tracks eventually curved back into the woods at the edge of our prairie, so I just had to follow them. I ran from crosstie to crosstie, gauging my stride to meet the dark brown, splintering planks. Sunlight glinted silver off the rails, slashing my eyes. I had a pretty good sense of direction, yet fear gripped me the whole way. Even in the daylight, I imagined scaring up a wolf or bear, animals that didn’t even frequent our woods. I took my eyes off the crossties for a second, scanning the horizon. In the distance, a deer and fawn dashed across the tracks. My mouth fell open, my foot caught on a crosstie, and I fell face forward onto the track. My hands flew out, bracing my fall. Pointed chalky rocks scraped my knees and hands, and a sharp jolt in my kneecap made my head swoon. I shut my eyes, and when I reopened them, sunspots clouded my vision. I breathed deeply, trying to shake the dizziness. When the sunspots cleared, I saw myself, sprawled out on a railroad track in the hot sun, desperate. I’d made a big mistake. Leading Franny out into the woods had been a big mistake. I broke into a cold sweat.
    I climbed off the tracks and went back into the woods, miraculously picking up a trail that still had the trace of our footprints. Thank God! Soon enough I smelled water, heard the croak of frogs, and felt a rush of relief. I was on the other side of the pond I visited daily, the cattails waving in the sun. I ran along the edge and picked up the trail back to the prairie. I was so relieved to be in familiar territory, yet I also realized that just as I had doubled back toward home, Franny had probably doubled her distance away from it.
    I made it home by four-thirty, and caught my breath against the patio wall before opening the kitchen door. When I looked through the window I saw Mother shaking salt onto a big bowl of potato salad and Gretta stirring a pitcher of lemonade. Gretta was just past forty by then, still blond and smooth-skinned, with a comfortable roll of fat above her apron ties. I feared and loved her in a way that was completely opposite of what I felt for Mother. She essentially wore the pants in the family—keeping me in line, teaching me the proper ways to do housework. She was always bent to the task at hand; I never worried about her prying into my life. She dealt in tangibles: meat, drink, roasted root vegetables. She mostly ignored the Heroines, only occasionally stepping in when a wily one needed a firm hand. Franny had been like any other guest to her.
    “Where’s Franny?” Mother asked as I came in.
    “She’s not coming for dinner. She doesn’t feel good.”
    “Doesn’t feel well,