Remembering Mrs. Rossi (9780763670900) Read Online Free Page A

around the room. (Annie sincerely hopes the students like his friendly smile.) “I suppose,” he goes on with a laugh, “you couldn’t
bear
to miss my fascinating little talk on Romeo and Juliet in a modern world.” (Annie hopes
someone
will laugh at her father’s joke. But nobody laughs.)
    Professor Rossi clears his throat. “Ladies, gentlemen.” He clears his throat a second time, and you can tell he is about to say something important. “I wanted to let you know we have a
visitor
in class today. A student from another school,” he adds, “and a real charmer, if I may say so myself. Her name is
Annie. Annie Rossi
” (as if it is the most important name in the world!). “She is eight years old and —
be forewarned
— she is watching everything you do.”
    Annie feels her face getting red. Everyone turns to look at her. A few even wave to her!
    For the next hour, Professor Rossi talks about Romeo. He talks about Juliet. He does not talk about Annie. (Frankly, she is hoping to hear at least one little story about herself.) He walks back and forth, and up and down the aisles. Annie doesn’t actually care all that much about Romeo, or even Juliet. She pumps her feet back and forth in big black boots, counting the students in Room 505. (There are forty-six.) She counts the girls in room 505. (There are twenty-one.) And the girls with curly hair. (There are eight.) She counts the boys who keep their coats on in school. (There are six.) And the girls in red sweaters. (There are two, plus Annie.)
    Annie’s cheeks are cold and hot from the storm outside and the steam heat inside. She leans on her left elbow awhile, then her right elbow. She leans on both elbows and looks inside her school bag, on the floor near her feet, and reaches down, slowly, for her book. She puts it on her lap and looks around the room.
See what I have, everyone?
Remembering Mrs. Rossi . . .
a whole book about my mother!
She smiles as she pictures herself reading out loud to the college kids, all of them squeezing as close as they can to Annie. They love her book very much, and they love Annie very much, and two — no,
five
— of the big girls want to be her friend!
Please, Annie, please! Be my best friend. . .
.
    Annie opens her book for the hundredth — no,
thousandth
— time. She reads slowly. Silently. Quietly turning the pages.
Hello, Mommy. It’s me, Mommy.
. . . Page after page, like so many secret little visits with her mother, and she imagines, just for a moment, a tiny version of herself dancing on the pages with her mother . . . and their fingers are touching, and no one dies. . . .
    Now and then Annie pauses, determined to choose, once and for all, her
favorite
story. But she runs into the same old problem every time: how to pick the
best
story when every single one is the best in the world. Twenty-four stories and twenty-four best authors!
    Once she wrote a letter to the authors in room 222, all twenty-four. The letter was her father’s idea (“We need to write a proper thank-you, Annie, for our book about Mommy”), but
she
did all the work — including lots of good pictures by Annie.

    Annie rests her head on her hands on the dark wooden desk. She drums her fingers softly on the desk and imagines running home to tell her mother all about her day off from school.
Mommy, there’s a girl in Daddy’s class with long red hair . . . and two girls were telling secrets . . . and a boy with a silly green hat was sleeping, I think.
    Professor Rossi talks on, and Annie drums on, longing to tell her mother about no hot cookies and mismatched pajamas and her big black boots making beautiful tracks all the way to Sherman Hall. Yes, she longs to tell her mother every single thing about the biggest blizzard ever, and together they can give it a name. They can call it
Annie’s Blizzard.



O ne spring morning, Annie Rossi escorts her father to the breakfast table. The inside of her is bubbling with excitement. On the outside, though,