Darby

Hearing voices, I raised my eyes and saw Evette and her older brothers halfway down the dirt lane to their house. I got up and met them. "Hey, Joebean and Lucius," I told them. "Hey Darby," they said. Evette pointed at the notebook I had. "You got another story writ up?" Nodding, I said, "You wanna edit it?" "Long as my name gets in the paper." "It's gonna," I promised. "I sat outside while Evette changed into her play clothes. Then we went through the field and into the woods. Sitting down on top of a log, she read what I'd done. She read it agai, and lifting her face real slow, she gave me a look. "Is it okay?" I asked. "Just needs some smoothing out. This one's done more professional than the last." She smiled at me. "Do you think it's good?" "I do," she told me, taking my pencil and marking my newspaper article in what seemed like a hundred different spots. She saw me watching, and said, "It ain't nothing." DARBY by Jonathon Scott Fuqua. Copyright (c) 2002 by Jonathon Scott Fuqua. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.Fuqua, Jonathon Scott is the author of 'Darby ' with ISBN 9780763622909 and ISBN 0763622907.