Rabble Starkey by Lois Lowry

anything. He looked real careful at her little squinchy blue eyes.
    "Millie," he said in a gentle, sort of joking voice, all reassuring, "I do believe you must have nine lives, like a cat." He put his arm under her shoulders and helped her to sit up.
    She squinted around. "Where are my glasses?" she asked.
    Gunther reached over to the table and handed them to her. "They're kinda busted," he said, sadly.
    The glass wasn't broken, but the gold frame was all bent on one side. She tried to put them on, but you could tell it hurt when she touched her face, and finally she just held the glasses in her lap.
    "Well," she said crossly, "how do you expect me to
see
anything?"
    Mr. Bigelow took the glasses and pried at the bent part until he straightened it some. Then, real careful, trying not to touch the swollen-up place, he put them onto her. She blinked and looked around the room. "What was it broke?" she asked loudly. "I heard something break."
    I ran to the hall by the front door and picked up the handle that was lying there in the pieces of broken
glass. I took it back to her. "It's sharp at the end," I said, trying to be helpful. "Be careful."
    Sitting up, Millie Bellows had been trying to get herself in order and to look dignified, but when she took that handle from me, and peered at it through her bent glasses, her face just sort of fell apart. She started to cry. "My mother's wedding-gift pitcher," she said. "It sat there upon that hall table all my life!" She turned the handle over and over in her hands.
    "Me and Veronica'll try to mend it for you," I told her. "We'll use Elmer's glue." I knew we couldn't, but I thought it might make her stop crying if I said that.
    Mr. Bigelow hugged her tight around the shoulders. "Millie," he said, "I have the car outside. And I'm going to run you over to the hospital so they can take an X ray. You look just fine to me, but we want to be sure."
    She looked all confused, but she gave the handle back to me and swung her legs down to the floor. "Here," I said. "I have your slippers here." I knelt down to put them back on her feet.
    But she kicked at me like a little child having a tantrum. "Shoes!" she ordered, frowning. "Get me my shoes."
    Veronica found her Sunday shoes in the bedroom closet, and when Millie had them on, she stood up, leaning on Mr. Bigelow's arm.
    "You girls take Gunther home, and tell Sweet-Ho not to worry," Mr. Bigelow told us.
    So we did that, collecting our dumb old trick-or-treat bags from the porch as we went. Gunther
yawned and shivered all the way home, and we didn't talk much. Halloween was ruined.
    Back home, while Sweet-Ho was putting Gunther to bed, me and Veronica examined the black hat that I had wadded up inside my shawl. It was just like a little beanie, and inside on the lining was printed: SENIOR CHOIR. FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
    That didn't surprise us none.

9
    Millie Bellows had to stay in the hospital overnight—for observation, they said. It made Veronica and me laugh, thinking of Millie Bellows being observed. Shoot, she was always the one that did the observing of everything, from her porch chair. I wondered if she was an old crosspatch at the hospital, complaining about the nurses and the food and who-knows-what-all.
    Mr. Bigelow picked her up in his car and took her back home the next morning. After school, Sweet-Ho asked us to take over a casserole and some brownies.
    "We ought to take the Elmer's glue, too," Veronica said, "and try to glue her broken pitcher."
    So I put the little white bottle of glue in my pocket and we kicked through the leaves over to Millie Bellows's house, me with a shoe box full of Sweet-Ho's brownies and Veronica carrying the Bigelows' big blue casserole dish filled with beef stew.
    Millie Bellows knew we was coming because
Sweet-Ho had called her on the phone, so we just knocked loud and went in. She was lying on the couch again, but with her glasses on; she was watching TV. Dumb old
Wheel of Fortune,
with Vanna