Free The Book of Bright Ideas by Sandra Kring Page B

grabbed at my cheek skin with my teeth. “Go on, Button,” she said. “Just say anything to her. If you do, you won’t be so scared of dead people anymore.”
    I’d been Winnalee’s best friend for nine days now. Long enough to know that if Winnalee had something on her mind for me to do, she wasn’t about to let up till I did it. I didn’t lean down, but my head did, and I said, “Hi.”
    Winnalee waited, like maybe I was going to say more. I waited for her to stop waiting, but it didn’t look like she was going to, so I leaned over again and added, “And I washed behind my ears today too.”
    When I backed away, she said to me, “You should practice talking to live people too.”
    Then she crossed the room and fetched her Book of Bright Ideas out from under her pillow (where she said she was gonna keep it from now on, in case she got a good idea right before she fell asleep), and she opened it up and wrote:
Bright Idea #86: If you’re scared of dead people, then you’re probably scared of live people too. But you don’t got to be scared of either.

6

    It was a Saturday, so I couldn’t go see Winnalee. Ma made me clean my room, stripping down the bedding, and dusting, and then I had to dust the rest of the rooms. She checked on me over and over again and corrected me when I didn’t make neat enough corners with my sheets and when I left streaks of Pledge on my nightstand. We were cleaning good because Aunt Stella was stopping by that night, while on her way to Minneapolis to see a friend. Aunt Stella lived about three hours away from Dauber. She looked just like Ma, but older, and not so tall, and not so skinny. She sniffed a lot, even when she didn’t have a cold.
    Since I couldn’t have any fun, I busied myself while I worked by thinking about me and Winnalee’s plans to go find the fairies. We already had a plan sheet that we kept in Winnalee’s shoe box. So far, we just had a list of some of the things we needed to bring along. Things like peanut butter sandwiches and cookies, Kool-Aid, if we could find something that shut tight to pour it in, shoes for Winnalee, and a compass and a map to help us find that beck. While I stood on a stool and waited for Ma to take down her bell collection so she could wash them and I could dust the shelf, I wondered where we’d come up with a map to show us the way to the beck. Winnalee and me had been working on the plans for three weeks now, which told me that big adventures sure did take big planning.
    â€œEvelyn?” Ma said. “Are you going to answer me or not?”
    I started making those noises (that Aunt Verdella once called a “nerve tic,” or something like that) in my throat, because I didn’t know what the question was, so I didn’t know what the answer should be.
    â€œYou weren’t listening, were you?”
    When I cleared my throat, it sounded like the sputtering of a car that just didn’t want to start.
    â€œI asked what you and that little girl do while you’re at Aunt Verdella’s,” she said. Her voice was slow, and lower than it usually sounded.
    The truth was, when we weren’t making plans to go find the fairies, we played games Winnalee made up. Like riding out west on sticks to lasso wild horses, then sitting in the saloons while the cowboys hit each other over the heads with beer bottles, because they all wanted to be our only boyfriends. Or we’d play TV. We’d put on Winnalee’s dress-up clothes, and then I’d sit cross-legged on the floor while Winnalee stood on the bed. I was the audience lady, and she was the actress. And, boy, did she have good stories! One day, when I thought up a story of my own, it would be my turn to be the actress. Till then, though, I was just gonna be the audience lady. I didn’t tell Ma these things though. Instead, I just said, “We play.”
    â€œPlay