Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

the street and up to the door of the hardware store. “Damn,” she said softly when she found it locked. She glanced at her watch. Joe glanced at his. Eight-fifteen. The store opened at half past. Rachel backed up to the curb and squinted at the windows of the apartment above the store. They were open, their shades up.

“Earl!” she called. “Earl, it’s me, Rachel.”

After a moment, a balding, fiftyish man appeared at one of the windows, a mug in his fist. “Why, Rachel,” he said through the screen. “I must be dreaming. You finally ready to run away with me?”

Rachel smiled at him. “Do me a favor and open up early,” she said. “It’ll just take a sec. I need something in a hurry.”

“For you and you alone,” he sighed, a hand to his chest. “Be right down.”

As they waited in silence for Earl to unlock the door, Joe tried to guess what kind of bee had landed in this girl’s bonnet. She fidgeted impatiently, seemed angry all over again. But she had left the coffee shop smiling, her eyes glad. He stood and watched her expectantly. She looked ready to spring.

“Come on in,” Earl said as he held the door open for them, looking curiously at Joe. “Morning.”

While Earl switched on the lights, Rachel walked unerringly to a display of spray paints, all colors. After a moment, she handed Joe a can of red, one of yellow, tucked a green and an orange under her arm.

“You’re a pal, Earl,” she said as she paid for the paints, then collected her change and headed for the door. “Say hi to Mag for me.”

Out the door, down the sidewalk, and into the adjacent parking lot they went. “How are you at butterflies?” she asked him.

“Butterflies?”

“You know. Butterflies. Can you make butterflies?”

“Well, I can’t say—”

“Here, you can have red and yellow. Or would you rather have these?”

“No, I—”

“Just make sure you shake them up real well first.”

And then, as he was about to write her off as a complete lunatic, Joe saw what Rachel had seen after she left Angela’s Kitchen.

On one side of the parking lot, Paula’s Beauty Salon presented a scarred, brick flank, innocent and bland but for a single emblem. It was an irregular circle of black paint about four feet across. Inside it were three K’s, the middle one bigger than the others, like a monogram of sorts.

Rachel shook one paint can in each hand, the little balls inside sounding like tap dancers. Tentatively, Joe followed her lead. Rachel uncapped both of her cans. Standing directly in front of the wall, she spent a minute or two contemplating the graffiti, giving the cans an occasional shake, then suddenly lifted her right hand and in one swift, unflinching movement turned the largest of the K’s into a bright orange B. To the spine of the B she added a mirror image. She swirled color, the green can hissing wildly, into each quadrant. Topped her butterfly with drooping antennae, fleshed out its body, obliterated the black of its skeleton. She was finished before Joe had even uncapped his cans.

“What are you waiting for?”

“Should you be doing this?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder. “I mean, aren’t you worried someone will see you?”

“Worried someone will see me? You think I should be worried?”

“Well, these people can be pretty vindictive, can’t they?”

“Oh, I suppose,” she said, setting her paints at her feet and taking his from his hands. She gave them a vigorous shake and pried off their caps. Shouldering him aside, she began to work on the second K. “We outnumber them a hundred to one, but we act like a bunch of sheep. Too scared to rock the boat. Well, it’s my boat, too, and I’ll damned well rock it if I want to.”

To Joe, her butterflies were inescapably ugly, for he had seen their larvae. But they had a frozen sort of dignity, like fossils or dead trees.

“You think I should be afraid of them?” She added a flourish of yellow to a fresh wing. “I’d rather be afraid of them than afraid of me.”

Joe picked up a can of paint.

When they were finished, three ungainly butterflies struggled to breach their bizarre cocoon.

“Come on,” Rachel said, rubbing colors between her palms. “Let’s get cleaned up.”

It wasn’t until they had crossed Raccoon Creek and turned up her hill that Joe suddenly realized he’d never told Rachel his name.

“I’m Joe,” he said.

“I know.” She smiled. “Pleased to meet you.”

“How’d you know my name?”

“Belle Haven’s a small town,” she said. “Not much happens around here without everyone hearing about it in pretty short order. For instance.” She glanced at him without breaking stride. They were walking at a good clip up the steep road, and both of them were breathing hard, spending wind on both work and talk. “I know you arrived in town last night, driving a mobile home, got stuck on the bridge”—she tossed her head in the direction of the creek—“and ended up out at Ian’s campground.”

Joe whistled through his teeth. “This is a small town.”

“Which means you won’t get away with anything while you’re here. At least half a dozen people saw us go off together in the direction of my house.” She grinned at him. “Do you think I’d be walking up this hill with you otherwise?”

Joe shrugged. “I had wondered,” he said. “I figured you were a trusting sort of person.”

At which Rachel laughed. “You got that part wrong,” she said. And then, after a pause, “But not entirely.”

At the top of the hill and the end of the road, Rachel’s house sat by itself, the nearest neighbor halfway down the hill. She led Joe across her front yard and onto her porch.

“Won’t your family mind you bringing a grimy stranger home so early in the morning?” He pictured a mother in curlers, father un-bathed, children, perhaps, intent on their morning cartoons.

“I live alone,” she said. The door was unlocked, the windows wide open to