Blackberry Juice Sara Cassidy Helen Flook Illustrated by
Chapter One Where are the sudsy sheep and the horses with velvet noses The grumbling tractors and shiny silos When Mom said we were moving to a farmhouse I pictured a wide front porch and a tire swing strung from a huge tree Like in a picture book But I guess real life isn’t a picture book We’ve unfolded our bodies from the stinky moving van Rudy my little 1
brother holds the mason jar with our goldfish Einstein I hold Wigglechin our cat whose fur is standing on end We’re staring at a crooked porchless house in a ragged yard beside a gap-toothed barn with a slumped roof So it needs a little love Dad says He ruffles Rudy’s hair and kisses Mom on the cheek Too bad I’ve got to go He tosses me into a mangy haystack then untangles his bike from a lamp in the back of the van He slings an enormous duffel bag over his shoulder as if it’s as light as a cloud then pedals down the gravel road getting smaller and smaller until he’s the size of a fly Then poof he disappears 2
