Bluish Read Online Free Page B

was a small menorah for Hanukkah on a corner table. Bluish had brought that in. It had nine candles and nine branches. They had books in the bookcase about each holiday, Christmas, and Ramadan, too. Somebody had been eating the candy canes that Ms. Baker put on the tree. “Oh, I don’t mind,” she said, when Dreenie told her. “It’s the magic of the holiday spirit and a new year coming!” She added a few more candy canes each day.
    Dreenie could hear students in the lower, then upper halls. She heard lockers banging open, click-slamming shut. And then the rush and busy murmurings as students found their places. The littlest kids were in the downstairs classes. There was the muffled sound of school buses crunching frozen slush in front of the school building.
    Bluish!
    Dreenie took up her book bag and leaned in on the side of the couch. She sat there, in her place, as the building rang with sounds, echoing noise. She closed her eyes a moment. She could hear that some first-and second-grade classes downstairs were having a party, first thing. She got a whiff of a warm, sweet, cookie smell, rising on the air to the top floor and this fifth-grade double room.
    My new school—not new anymore! And my class. This, my corner, Dreenie thought, looking around. Always she thought that, first thing in the morning, claiming one corner of the couch.
    She took out her yellow pad about the project they would do. They had to decide about it. She would keep notes. But she wasn’t the one to write it all down. And she waited for the room to fill, warm and cozy with all the kids she knew. She had come to feel a good part of the whole. Even though she was closest to Tuli, she had no special friend yet. But she liked all her classmates. The students went to their lockers, one by one, or two by two, and then they came in. Rid of their coats. Cheeks flushed in a rosy glow.
    Two weeks had passed since Dreenie had told her mom about Bluish.
    If Bluish came today, she might stay for the whole day because of the project. A few times her mom had come for her when she’d had a doctor’s appointment. One time, on the spur of the moment, Dreenie had asked Ms. Baker to let her and Tuli see that Bluish got to the first floor, and she’d let them.
    So yesterday, when Mrs. Winburn came and waited downstairs, Dreenie and Tuli got on the elevator after Bluish. They made sure the door stayed open until her chair wheels were inside. They hung back on each side of her. She had her puppy with her, and they petted its head.
    “Lucky, you get to ride, too,” Dreenie had said, smiling. Looking down at the floor. Pretending she and Tuli were on the early shift for lunch. And not there just to watch out for Bluish.
    Well, they didn’t need to pretend. Bluish knew from the start. She’d looked up at them, in the half-minute it took to go down. Dreenie couldn’t say what the look was exactly. But she’d come to know the many different ways Bluish had of looking at you. Sad looks, afraid looks, and watchful ones. One of her mean looks could just cut into you.
    But yesterday, Bluish had looked pleased to have Dreenie and Tuli there. They’d reached the ground floor with Bluish. It was Dreenie’s turn to take hold of her chair and push it off the elevator. One time, Bluish had said, “I can do it.” Tuli had said the same thing. But Tuli would jerk the chair and scare Bluish. Sometimes, when Bluish was frightened, Lucky would bark. Rrrr-rrrr-rrr! it sounded like.
    “You tell me when you want one of us to push you,” Dreenie had told Bluish. Over a couple of weeks, there grew this way of talking and doing things between them. It blossomed and spread all over the classroom.
    It was as if Dreenie knew how to act toward Bluish. Never too close, never too far away. Never to put on being friendly, but always be yourself.
    “Hola, girlfren’!” It was Tuli, up right in her face.
    Dreenie jumped, startled, she’d been thinking so hard. “Tuli,” she said