But nothing happened. The big garden was as still and quiet as always, and there was no sign of the boy.
She ran behin>Shm>myd a tree, waited and listened, but she heard and saw nothing. She ran to another tree and waited. Nothing. When she got back to her pear tree what she saw astonished her.
Standing on the ground, just under her branch, was the boy. He was holding the book under his arm and seemed to be waiting.
Was this some new boy trap that she’d never seen before? she wondered. Is this what foreign boys—meaning ones not from Edilean—did to girls who threw dirt at them? If she walked up to him, would he clobber her?
As she watched him, she must have made a sound because he turned and looked at her.
Kim jumped behind a tree, ready to protect herself from whatever came flying, but nothing did. After a few moments she decided to stop being a scaredy cat and stepped out into the open.
Slowly, the boy started walking toward her and Kim got ready to run. She knew not to let boys who she’d thrown things at get too close. They prided themselves on their throwing arms.
She held her breath when he got close enough that she knew she wouldn’t be able to get away.
“I’m sorry I took your book,” he said softly. “Mr. Bertrand lent it to me so I didn’t know it belonged to anyone else. And I didn’t know about the tree being yours, either. I apologize.”
She was so astonished she couldn’t speak. Her mother said that males did
n’t know the meaning of the word “sorry.” But this one did. She took the book he was holding out to her and watched as he turned away and started back toward the house.
He was halfway there before she could move. “Wait!” she called out and was shocked when he stopped walking. None of her boy cousins ever obeyed her.
She walked up to him, the book firmly clutched against her chest. “Who are you?” she asked. If he’d said he was a visitor from another planet, she wouldn’t have been surprised.
“Travis . . . Merritt,” he said. “My mother and I arrived late last night. Who are you?”
“Kimberly Aldredge. My mother and I are staying in there”—she pointed—“while my father and brother go fishing in Montana.”
He gave a nod as though what she’d said was very important. “My mother and I are staying there.” He pointed to the apartment on the other side of the big house. “My father is in Tokyo.”
Kim had never heard of the place. “Do you live near here?”
“Not in this state, no.”
She was staring at him and thinking that he was very much like a doll, as he didn’t smile or even move very much.
“I like the book,” he said. “I’ve never read anything like it before.”
In her experience she didn’t know boys read anything they didn’t have to. Except her cousin Tris, but then he only read about sick people, so that didn’t count. “What do you read?” she asked.
“Textbooks.”
he are you
She waited for him to add to that list but he just stood there in silence. “What do you read for fun?”
He gave a slight frown. “I rather like the science textbooks.”
“Oh,” she said.
He seemed to realize that he needed to say more. “My father says that my education is very important, and my tutor—”
“What’s that?”
“The man who teaches me.”
“Oh,” she said again, but had no idea what he was taking about.