Beezus and Ramona - Beverly Cleary [16]
“Well, the world is round just like an orange,” Beezus told her. “If you could start out and travel in a perfectly straight line you would come right back where you started from.”
“I would?” Ramona looked as if she didn’t understand this at all. She also looked as if she didn’t care much, because she went right on powdering her face with the marshmallows.
Oh, well, thought Beezus, there’s no use trying to explain it to her. She went into the bedroom to change from her school clothes into her play clothes. As usual, she found Ramona’s doll, Bendix, lying on her bed, and with a feeling of annoyance she tossed it across the room to Ramona’s bed. When she had changed her clothes she went into the kitchen, ate some graham crackers and peanut butter, and helped herself to two marshmallows. If Ramona could have two, it was only fair that she should have two also.
After eating the marshmallows and licking the powdered sugar from her fingers, Beezus decided that reading about Big Steve would be the easiest way to keep Ramona from thinking up some mischief to get into while Mother was away. “Come here, Ramona,” she said as she went into the living room. “I’ll read to you.”
There was no answer. Ramona was not there.
That’s funny, thought Beezus, and went into the bedroom. The room was empty. I wonder where she can be, said Beezus to herself. She looked in Mother and Father’s room. No one was there. “Ramona!” she called. No answer. “Ramona, where are you?” Still no answer.
Beezus was worried. She did not think Ramona had left the house, because she had not heard any doors open and close. Still, with Ramona you never knew. Maybe she was hiding. Beezus looked under the beds. No Ramona. She looked in the bedroom closets, the hall closet, the linen closet, even the broom closet. Still no Ramona. She ran upstairs to the attic and looked behind the trunks.
Then she ran downstairs to the basement. “Ramona!” she called anxiously, as she peered around in the dim light. The basement was an eerie place with its gray cement walls and the grotesque white arms of the furnace reaching out in all directions. Except for a faint sound from the pilot light everything was silent. Suddenly the furnace lit itself with such a whoosh that Beezus, her heart pounding, turned and ran upstairs. Even though she knew it was only the furnace, she could not help being frightened. The house seemed so empty when no one answered her calls.
Uneasily Beezus sat down in the living room to try to think while she listened to the silence. She must not get panicky. Ramona couldn’t be far away. And if she didn’t turn up soon, she would telephone the police, the way Mother did the time Ramona got lost because she started out to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Thinking of the rainbow reminded Beezus of her attempt to explain to Ramona that the world is round like an orange. Ramona hadn’t looked as if she understood, but sometimes it was hard to tell about Ramona. Maybe she just understood the part about coming back where she started from. If Ramona set out to walk to the end of the rainbow, she could easily decide to try walking around the world. That was exactly what she must have done.
The idea frightened Beezus. How would she ever find Ramona? And what would Mother say when she came home and found Ramona gone? To think of Ramona walking in a straight line, hoping to go straight around the world and come back where she started from, trying to cross busy streets alone, honked at by trucks, barked at by strange dogs, tired, hungry…But I can’t just sit here, thought Beezus. I’ve got to do something. I’ll run out and look up and down the street. She can’t have gone far.
At that moment Beezus heard a noise. She thought it came from the basement, but she was not certain. Tiptoeing to the cold-air intake in the hall, she bent over and listened. Sure enough, a noise so faint she could scarcely hear it came up through the furnace pipe. So the house wasn’t empty after all! Just wait until she got hold of