Their steps matched, and Mina was wearing heels, so he must be abbreviating his, she thought, listening to their footsteps down the quiet street. They passed houses on one side and cars on the other as they walked down the sidewalk. She heard TVs and sometimes voices. She thought about what he’d told her. It bothered him, about his sister.
“If you’re the oldest, that probably means you’re the responsible one, and the big achiever in your family. That’s the way the oldest child usually is. I’m second youngest in mine,” she said.
“So you’re irresponsible? An underachiever? Immature?” he asked, his voice telling her he didn’t believe that.
“Not everybody goes according to the usual rules,” she agreed.
They walked on in the humid darkness, past a couple of big old houses, built at the turn of the century for huge families and their servants, but now crumbling into disrepair. One of them had a round tower running up its side, showing dark against the sky, the tower shadowy black and the places where there were windows shiny black. “Wait,” Dexter said. “Wait a minute.”
They went back to stand on the sidewalk in front of the dark house. A couple of magnolia trees grew in the front yard, and the porch was a dark strip behind its railings.
“Is this empty?” Dexter’s voice asked. He was almost whispering.
“It looks it. I wouldn’t know. Why?” She wondered if he was the kind of person who wanted to break into an empty house. She wondered how well Jeff knew him.
“Because it’s the kind of project my mother could really get her teeth into. She could spend years on it. If we bought it.” Mina couldn’t see his face, but his voice sounded excited. “See”—he moved to the steps and looked up at the house—“she never worked at a job, she never had to and she doesn’t want to. She’s got some money of her own, which is lucky because my father—my real father—isn’t the kind of guy you can rely on. He’s—”
“The perfect youngest child?” Mina suggested, giving him a way out.
“Yeah. Dad’s not like that. Mom did fine the second time. But—do you think it would be okay if I just went up onto the porch? You have to touch something, to get a feel for if it’s all right. Or I do anyway.”
“Go ahead,” Mina said, embarrassed at what she’d been thinking about him.
He went up and stood there, a dark figure. He lifted his shadowed face as if he could see up and into the house; he stood there, quiet, as if he was listening. Then he jumped down, over all four steps, and came back to join her, still looking back to the empty house. “It’ll do, if it’s only on the market, if we can only afford it. My dad’s a professor and I don’t know how the prices are down here—up here,” he corrected himself. “It feels right. What’s the neighborhood like? We could be in it by midsummer, and Mom would have five years work ahead of her so she’d be off Clarissa’s back. Because she gets on people’s backs, worrying, and that’s the thing that’ll drive Clarissa right away, into drugs or who knows what else, and they both know it, but knowing it doesn’t help much. Does it? What’s the neighborhood like? You didn’t answer. Is it a bad neighborhood?”
Mina didn’t know what to answer because—because she didn’t know what he’d think was a bad neighborhood. The neighborhood was starting to be mixed; a couple of white families had moved in, taking advantage of lower prices in this part of town. He came from Baltimore, a city, and his father was a professor, so probably he wasn’t frightened of whites the way someone from a more insulated environment would be. But she didn’t know if city neighborhoods had the same economic mix most Crisfield streets did: Some of the families on this street were respectable middle class; some of the families had troubles, some of the troubles were bad ones, and some of the bad ones were troubles of their own making. Mina wondered how to frame this question; to ask Dexter the precise kind and degree of his various prejudices. Just the thought started her giggling.
“What’s funny?”
“You are. I am. How old is Clarissa?” She hoped to distract him.
“Thirteen, which is . . . a bad age. I think. Is there something wrong with the neighborhood?”
“Come on back to my house, we’ve got lemonade, if you’re not in a hurry?”
“I’m in no hurry to get back to the hotel,” his voice said.
He was another one of those exact ones, Mina thought. She walked along the three more blocks to their house and up into the small living room. “I’ve got to be sure my brother’s all right. Both my parents are out,” she explained, trying not to just stare at him.
He nodded, his smile showing her he understood about little brothers and sisters. Mina kept herself from running up the stairs, walking up normally even though she was in a hurry to get herself hidden for a minute, to get her feelings covered up and kept private. Laughing at herself, she watched Louis sleep for a while, before she took off her shoes and danced on back down the stairs to join Dexter.
They sat on the screened porch, with the candles lit. “It’s an okay neighborhood,” she said. “Although, there are a couple of white families who’ve moved in.”
“I’m not prejudiced.” He smiled. He had a broad straight nose and a strong jawline. He kept smiling at her and she kept smiling back. “The school I go to in Baltimore, the University School, it’s mostly whites.”
Mina nodded her head. She knew how that was. His skin was the color of dark chocolate, semi-sweet.
“My dad teaches with Professor Greene, but he’s in the Physics Department. Professor Greene’s how we heard about Crisfield. Dad says he won’t mind the commute if it’s a good place for us kids. But I’m not really a friend of Jeff’s.”
“Oh?” Mina wondered what that meant, why he said that.
“I don’t know him. I’d like to be, I like what I do know about him, but—I always move carefully with whites, because I always have the feeling I’m not sure I can trust them. Have you known Dicey long?”
“Long enough. So I guess you are prejudiced.”
“I try not to be. I guess I’m just your standard, wishy-washy liberal type. Your father’s a minister, Jeff said.”
Why had he skipped to that? Mina wondered, as she nodded her head.
“I’m an atheist,” Dexter told her. “Do you mind?”
“It’s up to God to mind about that,” Mina said. “It’s none of my business.”
He found this funny too. “I play lacrosse. What about you?”
“Tennis. I was on junior varsity this year.” It was like they were exchanging data about one another.
“And I like classical music. I even play some.”
“The clarinet,” Mina guessed, because of the sound of his voice, the sounds of his voice.
“No, the flute. Why did you say clarinet? Do I look like a clarinetist or something? Do you like that kind of looks? Do you play?” He certainly asked a lot of questions and didn’t give her any time to answer most of them.
Mina didn’t mind. She could keep up with him. “I sing,” she said. “In the choir.”
“That’s all right then. I’m probably going to medical school, which takes a long time.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Mina finally demanded.
“Because I want you to know me. Because I intend to see you again,” Dexter said. “If it’s all right with you. If we do move down here, which you can believe me I’ll be arguing for with my not inconsiderable skill in debate.”
“Modest, aren’t you,” Mina teased. Oh yes, she thought, it was all right with her. All right and then some.
“No,” he answered, not treating it as a joke. His eyes looked serious and amused and interested and hopeful all at once. “I try to keep a clear reading on myself.”
“I know what you mean,” Mina said. She did like him, even if he wasn’t what anybody’d call a relaxing or easy person. He had an unmanageable amount of energy, that was her guess.
“So, tell me about yourself; where are you going?”
“You mean to colle
ge?”
“Of course. Cornell has a good undergraduate premed course, and a good liberal arts school too. Or Duke.”
“I see,” Mina said. “We’re going to the same school.”
“You wait,” he teased her. “You’ll make a good doctor’s wife.”
“Yeah, but will you make a good lawyer’s husband?” she asked him. This was just a game, some strange form of flirtation.
“Are you going to go to law school?”
“I might. I’ve been thinking about it. I might do about anything,” Mina said, which was true. She knew he was feeling about her just as she was feeling about him, like they’d been born good friends, even if they’d just now met up with one another.
Dexter didn’t stay long, and he didn’t try to kiss her or anything, although he did put a hand on her shoulder, just briefly touching her. Mina almost wished he would kiss her, because she thought she wanted to kiss him with her eyes open, seeing who he was. But it was as if they had a long time before them and no need to hurry through it. Mina stood on her front porch and watched him walk back toward town. About half a block away, he started just running. She knew why he did that, she thought.
The lights were on in Miz Hunter’s old house, where they were having a meeting about finances. The rest of the street was dark, and the branches of the trees were rustling in the wind. Mina stood on the front porch until she couldn’t stand still any longer.
Mina leaped down off the porch into the dark yard. There she danced around in circles, as if she was on a stage, jetés and pirouettes. She didn’t mind if anybody saw her, not that she wanted anybody to. She just wanted to dance, just for a few minutes, because sometimes there was nothing but dancing to really say what you felt. Even if someone had told you years ago that you couldn’t dance, and you’d been silly enough to believe them, even if they were right.
CYNTHIA VOIGT won the Newbery Medal for Dicey’s Song and a Newbery Honor for A Solitary Blue, both part of the beloved Tillerman Cycle. She is also the author of many other celebrated books for middle-grade and teen readers, including the Bad Girls series; Izzy, Willy-Nilly; and Jackaroo. She was awarded the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1995 for her work in literature, and the Katahdin Award in 2003. She lives in Maine. You can visit her at cynthiavoigt.com.
Cover design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover
Cover illustration copyright © 2012 by Mick Wiggins
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster
New York
Ages 12 up
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TEEN.SimonandSchuster.com
Books by Cynthia Voigt
THE BAD GIRLS SERIES
Bad Girls
Bad, Badder, Baddest
It’s Not Easy Being Bad
Bad Girls in Love
Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do?
THE TILLERMAN SERIES
Homecoming
Dicey’s Song
A Solitary Blue
The Runner
Come a Stranger
Sons from Afar
Seventeen Against the Dealer
THE KINGDOM SERIES
Jackaroo
On Fortune’s Wheel
The Wings of a Falcon
Elske
OTHER BOOKS
Building Blocks
The Callender Papers
David and Jonathan
Izzy, Willy-Nilly
Orfe
Tell Me if the Lovers Are Losers
Tree by Leaf
The Vandemark Mummy
When She Hollers
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1986 by Cynthia Voigt
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Also available in an Atheneum Books for Young Readers hardcover edition
Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover
The text for this book is set in Baskerville.
First Atheneum Books for Young Readers paperback edition July 2012
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Voigt, Cynthia.
Come a stranger.
Summary: Mina’s deep love for a grown-up minister drives her to seek a way to give him an unforgettable remembrance, restoration of his faith.
ISBN 978-0-689-31289-2
[1. Clergy—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.V874Co 1986
[Fic] 86-3610
ISBN 978-1-4424-5063-9 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4424-2882-9 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-44248-917-2 (eBook)
Come a Stranger Page 23