Dragonfly Secret by Carolyn J. Gold Page A

don’t you open the window?” Mother didn’t wait for an answer. She opened the window herself. “Now go have your breakfast. I’ll make your bed for you.”
    I couldn’t pass up an offer like that. I scooted for the kitchen. I wasn’t worried about Mother seeing Willow. She never went near the cage. Lizards and bugs and frogs made her nervous. That’s why I’d had to give away my lizards the second time they got loose.
    After breakfast Jessie and I decided to check on Willow. As I opened the door to my room, I heard a crash and saw a flash of gray fur. Smokey, Mrs. Pruitt’s cat, bounded up onto the ledge and out the open window. “Shoo, you pesky cat,” I hollered after him.
    Jessie giggled. “You sound like Gramps.” Then her eyes grew wide and her face turned pale. “Nathan! The cage!”
    I was across the room in three quick steps. The cage lay smashed on the floor. Crushed roses and wet plastic doll furniture were jumbled amid the broken glass.
    â€œWillow!” Jessie cried, kneeling down and reaching for the wreckage.
    â€œWait!” I ordered. “You’re going to cut yourself. Hand me the wastebasket.”
    I started picking up the mess cautiously, not wanting to injure Willow further if she was buried somewhere under there. I picked up jagged pieces of glass. Then wet roses. Then doll furniture. I sat back and stared at Jessie.
    â€œWillow’s not here.”
    â€œSmokey got her!” she said, tears running down both cheeks.
    I shook my head slowly. “Maybe. But I don’t think so. The cat might have gotten Willow, but where’s the grub-thing? I don’t think a cat would eat that.”
    I looked around the room. There was nowhere for a fairy to hide.
    â€œThe window,” Jessie and I said at the same instant.
    â€œShe’s outside!” I looked at Jessie. “We’ve got to find her, before the cat does.”
    We ran outside. How would we ever find her? She looked like a dragonfly, and I had seen dragonflies in the garden sometimes. It was hard enough trying to catch any old dragonfly. How would we ever find the special one that was really a fairy?
    Then I saw Smokey again. The cat was slinking around the corner of the house like a puff of smoke, headed toward Mother’s rosebushes.
    â€œThe flower bed,” I guessed. “Willow is used to roses. Maybe she hid there.”
    Smokey seemed to think so, too. I scooped up a handful of gravel and hurled it at him, but he didn’t give up. He hunkered down and went around to the other side of the flower bed and kept hunting. I could see the tip of his tail swishing back and forth.
    â€œCome on. We’ve got to hurry.”
    Jessie started from one end of the flower bed and I started from the other. I scratched myself on rose thorns, but I kept going. I was pretty sure we were on the, right track because I couldn’t get Smokey to leave, no matter how many times I yelled at him and threw sticks. He knew there was something special in that flower bed. We had to find Willow before he did.
    â€œNathan!” Jessie’s cry sounded excited. I hurried over to see what she had found. “Look,” she said softly, pointing at a big yellow rose high up on Mother’s favorite climbing rose bush. I could see the tips of dragonfly wings. But were they Willow’s?
    â€œWillow,” Jessie called softly. “Willow, it’s us.”
    The wings fluttered, and Willow’s tiny face peered between the petals, but she didn’t fly down to Jessie’s outstretched hand.
    â€œShe’s probably scared,” I said. “I would be if that stupid cat had tried to eat me.”
    â€œWe can’t leave her out here,” Jessie said. She wasn’t crying anymore, but she looked as if she might start in again any minute.
    â€œI’ll get the ladder,” I told her. “You stay here and keep an eye on