Читать книгу Twins' Double Victory - Karen Jones - Страница 3

“There’s a warm breeze tonight,” I said to my twin sister, Emily, while I was closing our bedroom window. “I’m so tired now that school’s finally out for the summer, I could fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow.”

“I’m going to bed, too,” Emily said, yawning. “And, Emma, whatever you do, don’t wake me up again with another one of your nightmares.”

Deep into the night, I tossed and turned as moving pictures played in my mind of Dad saying, “Girls, I can’t support you without a job, so I’m trying my luck at gold prospecting. Tomorrow, you’ll be going to a children’s home to live. I’ll return for both of you if I find some gold in Arizona.”

“No, Daddy, I want to stay with you,” I said.

“You’ll like living with all the other children,” Dad said to Emily and me.

“All the other children,” I repeated over and over, seeing the boys and girls crowding around my sister and me at the children’s home.

Suddenly, I heard Emily saying, “Wake up, Emma. You were having a bad dream again.”

“It’s that same dream about being in our first home with orphans and children whose parents couldn’t keep them,” I said. “I wish I could dream about the times when we were little and living with Mother and Dad.”

“Emma, you’ve always earned high marks in composition. Remember when our fourth grade teacher, Miss Gleeson, laughed when you read your story about the cat that grew a mustache? Last year, Mr. Cobb bragged on your use of vocabulary and description and said your writing was outstanding for a ninth grader. I bet if you wrote everything down, beginning with your earliest memories, your bad dreams would stop.”

“I’m surprised that I can still remember as far back as when we were six,” I said. “Writing a story from 1924 until now may take a while, but it’ll be worth the time if it stops my nightmares.”

“Someday your story may even be made into a book,” Emily added.

“That sounds wonderful,” I said, jumping out of bed. “I must dress and eat quickly. I have a story to write.”

In the cool of the morning, I sat at my small desk under the window in the sunlit bedroom, and the magic of words came together to tell my story.