The Window Read Online Free Page A

I know Emma, Gabriel, and Abe all want me to tell them how things went. But I don't know myself and I'm too tired to sort it all out.
    I sag back into the car seat.
    At home I go to my room and flop on my bed. I am so tired.
    For a long time the afternoon happens again and again in my mind, names and voices and snatches of talk and how the bumps of one, two, and three felt under my fingers.
    "Some people think braille is on its way out," Ms. Zeisloff told me, "but I don't believe that."
    Teaching me braille will be the job of one of the itinerant teachers, a woman who'll work with me for a couple of hours three afternoons a week beginning Wednesday or Thursday.
    Meanwhile, Ms. Z. says she knows just enough to get me started.
    Braille dots under my fingertips...
    I think of Gwen, whoever she is. Gwen, whose fingertips dragged in summer dirt when she hung upside down from a tree limb.
    Had I made her up?
    I go to my window, open it. Run my hand down a lace curtain.
    It's just a curtain, I'm thinking, when the breeze quickens, pulls it from my hand, pulls on me.
    This time I lean into the dark wind, give myself over to it. In another moment I'm back all those years again, back to seeing, watching another girl in another time....

    Gwen snatched up her shoes and ran around to the back of the house, before her mother could come to the door and see her. She slipped into the kitchen, turned the radio on softly, and then went back outside.
    Sitting against the house in the cool shade, her bare legs on the cold, rough concrete of the side walkway, she waited for her program to come on. The salesman was here with a lot of things for her mother to look at. Maybe Gwen would have a whole half hour, long enough to hear an entire program, which didn't happen often.
    But news came on instead, more about Korea.
    Gwen had heard it first the evening before, from Abe, who'd heard it on the radio and run to tell. "We're at war," he had shouted. "The radio says we're at war and we got eight of their planes, but they didn't shoot down any of ours."
    "Nonsense," their mother had said. "Don't make things up."
    But of course the story had been in this morning's paper, and then all their mother could say was, "Well, here we go again."
    Gwen thought about the salesman. Would he have to go to war? How old was he, eighteen maybe? Old enough to be drafted?
    A screen door slapped shut in the front. He was leaving.
    Gwen ran along the side of the house.
    "Bye," she called, stopping him as he got in his car. "I just..." She searched for something to say. Stepped closer. "My mother buy any brushes?"
    "You got a name, sugar?" he asked.
    She looked carefully, decided his smile was not a smirk.
    "Gwen," she said. "What's yours?"
    "Paul."
    Paul started his car, getting the motor to catch on the third try. Wiggled the stick shift into reverse. "Be seeing you, Gwendolyn," he said. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
    "Gwen, not Gwendolyn. And I don't see how you'll be seeing me."
    "Thursday," he said. "Thursday I sell soap. I'll be back."

    "Mandy," Aunt Emma says, giving my shoulder a light shake. "You've got to get up now if you're not going to be late."
    I wish I didn't have to go.
    It's Thursday morning, my fourth day of school, but so far I've only gone for afternoons, only dealt with the resource room. Kids are in there on varying, overlapping schedules, but I'm starting to get them figured out.
    I've gotten to know Ted, who really is more funny than mean, as long as you understand his sense of humor. I've also met Marissa, who's the only other one in the resource room with what she calls a "vision impairment." Marissa can see a lot, only very fuzzy, and she doesn't want to have anything to do with me.
    I'm not sure why Stace and the other boy are there. Ms. Z. doesn't give a lot of time for talking.
    But anyway, today ... Today I start my regular schedule.
    First period I've got math, the same class as Hannah. We go in together, early, and she introduces me to