Bridge to Terabithia: Chapters 8–10

“Brenda, will you shut your mouth?” his mother said sharply; then more wearily, “We got lot more than Easter clothes to worry about.”

“Why can’t we charge some things?” Ellie said in her wheedling voice.

Jess was glad to escape to the shed and the complacent company of Miss Bessie.

It would make you throw up to see how these girls make a spectacle of themselves in church.

“Jess Aarons!” The name was garbled and the milk dribbled down her chin as she spoke.

Jess tickled her to get her giggling again, so that when the four of them clambered down over the tail gate, they were flushed-faced and happy once more.

They were a little late, which didn’t bother Ellie and Brenda for it meant that they got to flounce down the entire length of the aisle to the first pew, making sure that every eye in the church was on them, and every expression of every eye a jealous one.

Jess could tune it out the same way he tuned out school, with his body standing up and sitting down in unison with the rest of the congregation but his mind numb and floating, not really thinking or dreaming but at least free.

Because he wasn’t listening to the words, the man’s red face with sweat pouring down seemed strangely out of place in the dull sanctuary.

It was as though the elements were conspiring to ruin their short week of freedom.

“What I want to do is go to Terabithia,” she said, looking out mournfully at the pouring rain.

P.T. bounded ahead, leaping fishlike from one brown sea to the next, then turning back to herd the two of them forward, nipping at their heels and further splashing their already sopping jeans.

Like in The Ten Commandments on TV when the water came rushing into the dry path Moses had made and swept all the Egyptians away, the long dry bed of the creek was a roaring eight-foot-wide sea, sweeping before it great branches of trees, logs, and trash, swirling them about like so many Egyptian chariots, the hungry waters licking and sometimes leaping the banks, daring them to try to confine it.

She was impatient to be gone, so Jess scooped up the sodden dog and shoved him rear-first into the cave of Leslie’s raincoat.

“I will arise,” he replied with dignity, “when thou removes this fool dog off my gut.”

The rain continued sporadically, so that by Wednesday the creek had swollen to the trunk of the crab apple and they were running through ankle-deep water to make their flight into Terabithia.

In the dim light he could see Leslie’s face freeze into its most queenly pose—the kind of expression she usually reserved for vanquished enemies.

He instantly repented his unkingly manner.

We are come on behalf of our beloved kingdom which lies even now under the spell of some evil, unknown force.

Give us, we beseech thee, wisdom to discern this evil, and power to overcome it.

Give us, we beseech thee, wisdom to discern this evil, and power to overcome it.

Even though there was no job to go to, he left every morning early to look. Sometimes he just hung around all day at the unemployment office; on lucky days he got picked up to unload furniture or do cleaning.

He clucked her gently over and set his stool at her flank and the pail beneath her speckled udder.

He wondered idly if cows were ever scared—really scared.

He stroked his forehead across her flank and sighed.

When he thought about it, he couldn’t suppress a secret pleasure at being alone in this small cozy car with Miss Edmunds.

She drove intently, both hands gripping the top of the wheel, peering forward.

I’m a liberated woman, Jess Aarons. When I invite a man out, I pay.

It was a three-dimensional nightmare version of some of his own drawings. He felt a frightening sense of kinship with it.

“I tolja he just gone off somewhere,” May Belle said quietly and stubbornly as though she had repeated it often and no one had believed her.