"Mary Rosenblum - Color Vision" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

“Okay.” Jeremy shrugs. “Then can we go to my house? He can
come, too.”

“He can’t. He’s in a wheelchair and ... he just can’t. This way.” The
path takes us left, closer to the ocean. I can smell it and hear the surf in the
distance. I’ll miss that, too.
 “Nobody lives out here.” Jeremy yelps as a blackberry cane snags
him. “There aren’t any houses out here. I’m bleeding.”

“No, you’re not.” I work the thorns out of the back of his shirt. Well, not
much. “It’s just ahead.”

“This better be ...” He shuts up as we push through this thick wall of
salal and some kind of creeper. “Wow!” He just stares for a moment. “How
the heck did this get out here?”

Well, yeah, it sort of looks like Sleeping Beauty’s castle with the gray
stone wall and all the blackberry canes. Actually, it looks a lot like Sleeping
Beauty’s castle. I’m bleeding, too, and I suck at the scratch on my wrist.

“Melanie, hold on.” Jeremy’s words have gone dark yellow. “I know
what this place is. The guy who built the lumber mill . . . the one that’s shut
down . . . He built this mansion out here on the point. But that was forever
ago and it’s all falling down, now. My cousin and his friends came out here
last Halloween. On a dare. He said the roof had fallen in and it was all grown
over with blackberries and stuff. They couldn’t even get inside. He said it
was a waste of time.” He stared at the big stone wall. “He didn’t say
anything about a wall. Or a castle. It isn’t like this.”

“How do you know?” I smile at him.

“ ‘Cause my cousin . . .” He looks at the wall again. Touches it like he
expects it to bite him. It doesn’t. “He would have told me. If it was here.”

I’m waiting. To see if he gets it. He probably won’t, but you know
something? I really really want him to get it.

“And where’s a road?” He’s looking around. “How would they get
groceries here? Go to church? Melanie, nobody can live out here like this.”

I quit waiting and head for the old apple tree, the one that kind of
leans on the wall like the old guys you can see through the doors of taverns
at noontime, leaning against the bar. I start climbing up.

“Hold on. Wait for me.” Jeremy scrambles up behind me and he’s
bet-ter at climbing than I am. And you know what? I don’t care.

I’m glad he didn’t turn around and go home.
 The apple tree’s branches sort of make this leafy cave at the top of
the wall and one thick, knobby branch sticks out like an arm to keep you