Cobwebs Read online

  Meet me there, she said to Dion in her mind. Meet me there if you hear me. Meet me there if you possibly can.

  Blue river light and gray dawn mist met in a swirl at Cadman Plaza. Nancy found the dark entrance, sprang up the smelly stairway two steps at a time, stood still for a moment on the pathway up the arc of the bridge, O wonderful web.

  The bridge soared above her, brown towers like church windows, and the city grew enormous around her as she walked. She grew small, so small she couldn’t be noticed, nearly invisible she was so small, so safe. She could have been anywhere. She was here.

  Tendrils of steam rose from the pink-gray-blue city in the sunrise. At the far side of the East River she stopped, wouldn’t enter Manhattan, let the breeze blow her back toward Brooklyn. Waiting. Watching.

  His eyes were blue like the river in this even light. His shirt was blue like the sky that wasn’t full of blue color yet. His face was sunlit like the faces of the buildings in Manhattan, rose-gray-blue. Now Nancy knew that some people didn’t see him, through looking away or ignoring or just not being aware. Now she knew that she had never missed him, not once, or, anyway, not since the first time she’d seen him on that ribbon of rail above the expressway and river. How could she miss him? Dion, laughing, drew Nancy toward him on the bridge.

  Can he see me, my new size?

  In the absence of danger, there was no need to be tiny or invisible. But it was good to know what they could do if they needed to. And they would.

  Does he know why he’s here?

  She slipped into his arms; he fit.

  Does he know why we are here?

  She saw into his eyes: he knew.

  ALSO BY KAREN ROMANO YOUNG

  THE BEETLE AND ME

  VIDEO

  OUTSIDE IN

  About the Author

  “Spiders crept into this story the way they creep into my writing room—softly, insistently, and unexpectedly. Suddenly they were there, creating magic around themselves. Beloved brick-and-brownstone Brooklyn became the background. When I went to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to take pictures, a real-life Dion in an Alta, Utah, T-shirt was there. My grandparents—a nurse and a doctor who really made house calls in New York City—provided more inspiration. And Nancy? Just as you’d expect, she came from the air. Her surroundings—from the Uprising Bakery in Park Slope to the kite shops in Chinatown—are there for the visiting. And be sure to look for me. I might be knitting, walking, rose-sniffing, roof-spying, or trying to find that curved street I think I saw once….”

  Karen Romano Young is the author of THE BEETLE AND ME. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, three children, two dogs, two cats, and one beta fish.

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  Copyright

  In the folklore traditions of cultures all over the world, there are spider stories of heroic transformations, romance among outcasts, weaving derring-do, extraordinary sensory abilities, and intriguing traps. Cobwebs is the creative outcome of years of fascination with the lore, art, and science of spiders, as well as weaving, jump rope, and other stringy arts.

  -K.R.Y.

  Cobwebs

  Copyright © 2004 by Karen Romano Young

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-02989-8

  The quote on this page is from The Lives of Spiders, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent (New York: Holiday House, 1980). Used by permission.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Young, Karen Romano.

  Cobwebs / by Karen Romano Young.

  p. cm.

  “Greenwillow Books.”

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Nancy enjoys the colorful ethnic mix of her heritage in several different Brooklyn households, not suspecting how very strange that heritage is.

  ISBN-10: 0-06-441028-5 (pbk.)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-06-441028-1 (pbk.)

  [1. Parent and child—Fiction. 2. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. 3. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 4. Spiders—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.Y8665Co 2004 [Fic]—dc21 2001045133

  First paperback edition, 2005

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. The Thread

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  2. The Knot

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  3. The Web

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  Also by Karen Romano Young

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher