Me and Rupert Goody Read Online Free

the subject up to Uncle Beau. Finally one day I said, “So, Uncle Beau, what you think is wrong with Rupert anyways?”
    Uncle Beau was sitting on his lumpy old couch by the magazine rack. Had a portable heater setting right smack in front of him going full blast. It was nearly June and didn’t feel a bit cold to me, but Uncle Beau, he got cold a lot. He scratched his whiskers. “Just a mite slow, I reckon,” he said.
    â€œSlow?” I let out a little “Hmmmf” and shook my head.
    Uncle Beau raised one eyebrow. “Speak your mind, Jennalee,” he said in a tone I didn’t much like.

    â€œSeems a tad more than slow to me, is all,” I said.
    Uncle Beau looked at me for a bit too long before he spoke. “Sometimes what’s in a heart means a hell of a lot more than what’s in a head.”
    I jabbed at the floor with the toe of my sneaker. “Maybe he ain’t really your son.” There, I said it. I listened to the heater whirring and waited. I hoped Rupert didn’t come barging in. Uncle Beau pushed hisself up off the couch with a grunt. He walked in that shuffling way of his to the front door and squinted out into the parking lot.
    â€œLooks like that storm is headin’ our way,” he said.
    That shut me up. I felt about as low as a slithery ole snake in the grass. Then, just as I was scrambling for a way to redeem myself, in came Rupert, waving a paint scraper in the air.
    â€œThat old paint come off the door real good, Uncle Beau,” he said. Little flecks of green paint stuck to his face and arms.
    â€œThat’s good,” said Uncle Beau. “What color you think we ought to paint it now?”
    Rupert looked at me. “What you think, Jennalee?”
    I looked at Uncle Beau, but he wasn’t doing nothing to help me feel any better. “Whatever,” I said.
    â€œI think I got some paint out in the shed,” Uncle Beau said, disappearing out the door.
    I looked at Rupert. He smiled at me and I set my frown even harder.
    â€œI reckon your family over in Fletcher must be worried about you,” I said.

    Rupert shook his head and looked down at his hands, fiddling with the paint scraper.
    â€œAin’t your family looking for you?”
    Rupert shook his head again.
    â€œMust be somebody looking for you.” I peered into Rupert’s face. “Who’d you live with before you come here?”
    â€œAll them people,” Rupert said.
    â€œWhat people?”
    â€œNana June and Miss Sophie and Mr. Reuben and Anna Lee and …”
    â€œWho’re they?”
    â€œThem people I lived with.”
    I squinted harder at Rupert. “Them people you lived with where?”
    â€œIn the homes,” he said.
    â€œYou mean the home? Like an orphanage?”
    â€œHe means the foster homes,” Uncle Beau said behind me.
    I jumped. “Oh,” I said, feeling my face burning.
    â€œMaybe we should head on over to Cherokee on Saturday,” Uncle Beau said. Was he talking to me or Rupert? My stomach was nothing but a ball of knots till he added, “Must be about ruby-mine time, don’t you reckon, Jennalee?”
    I felt a smile spread across my face. Nothing I like better than going to the ruby mine with Uncle Beau. It ain’t a real mine. They just call it that. They got these long troughs with water running through them. You buy yourself a
bucket of dirt. Five dollars for a regular bucket. Eight for a giant-size. You put a scoop of dirt in a sieve and slosh the sieve around in the water till all the dirt is washed away and ain’t nothing left in the sieve but rocks. Then you pick through them rocks and see if you got yourself a ruby Course, it ain’t a shiny red ruby like’s in a ring or nothing. It’s just a reddish-looking rock’s got to be cut and polished. I been collecting rubies for years. Got me a whole bunch in a Whitman’s candy box. My sister