Page 99 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade6_Flipbook

aCTIvITy 1.15
continued
In the end
peer: to look curiously or carefully at something
Word CoNNeCTIoNS
Cognates
The Spanish cognate for imagine is imaginar.
my Notes
12 Greg thought he heard the noise again. His stomach tightened as he held himself still and listened intently. There weren’t any more scraping noises, but he was sure he had heard something in the darkness—something breathing!
13 He tried to figure out just where the breathing was coming from; he knew it was in the room with him. Slowly he stood, tensing. As he turned, a flash of lightning lit up the room, frightening him with its sudden brilliance. He saw nothing, just the overturned table, the pile of rags and an old newspaper on the floor. Could he have been imagining the sounds? He continued listening, but heard nothing and thought that it might have just been rats. Still, he thought, as soon as the rain let up he would leave. He went to the window and was about to look when he heard a voice behind him.
14 “Don’t try nothin’ ‘cause I got a razor sharp enough to cut a week into nine days!”
15 Greg, except for an involuntary tremor in his knees, stood stock still. The voice was
high and brittle, like dry twigs being broken, surely not one he had ever heard before. There was a shuffling sound as the person who had been speaking moved a step closer. Greg turned, holding his breath, his eyes straining to see in the dark room.
16 The upper part of the figure before him was still in darkness. The lower half was in the dim rectangle of light that fell unevenly from the window. There were two feet, in cracked, dirty shoes from which rose legs that were wrapped in rags.
17 “Who are you?” Greg hardly recognized his own voice.
18 “I’m Lemon Brown,” came the answer. “Who’re you?”
19 “Greg Ridley.”
20 “What you doing here?” The figure shuffled forward again, and Greg took a small
step backward.
21 “It’s raining,” Greg said.
22 “I can see that,” the figure said.
23 The person who called himself Lemon Brown peered forward, and Greg could see
him clearly. He was an old man. His black, heavily wrinkled face was surrounded by a halo of crinkly white hair and whiskers that seemed to separate his head from the layers of dirty coats piled on his smallish frame. His pants were bagged to the knee, where they were met with rags that went down to the old shoes. The rags were held on with strings, and there was a rope around his middle. Greg relaxed. He had seen the man before, picking through the trash on the corner and pulling clothes out of a Salvation Army box. There was no sign of a razor that could “cut a week into nine days.”
24 “What are you doing here?” Greg asked.
25 “This is where I’m staying,” Lemon Brown said. “What you here for?” “Told you
it was raining out,” Greg said, leaning against the back of the couch until he felt it give slightly.
26 “Ain’t you got no home?”
27 “I got a home,” Greg answered.
28 “You ain’t one of them bad boys looking for my treasure, is you?” Lemon Brown
cocked his head to one side and squinted one eye. “Because I told you I got me a razor.”
72 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 6
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