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    The Glory Girl
    The Glory Girl
    The Glory Girl
    Ebook123 pages2 hours

    The Glory Girl

    By Betsy Byars

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Anna’s role in her family of gospel singers is an important one—far away from the stage
    Every member of the Glory family is blessed with abundant musical talent. Everyone, that is, except for Anna. She can’t sing or play an instrument, so the family counts on her to sell their music at performances. Naturally, she feels completely left out. When her black sheep Uncle Newt is released from prison, Anna feels oddly close to him, even though they’ve never met before. After all, Newt must know what it means to feel like an outsider. But when the Glorys’ tour bus crashes and her loved ones are in danger, Anna can’t sit on the outside any longer. The Glory Girl is a funny, moving tale of one oddball kid finding her place in her family, and in the world. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Betsy Byars including rare images from the author’s personal collection.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateFeb 12, 2013
    ISBN9781453294222
    The Glory Girl
    Author

    Betsy Byars

    Betsy Byars is the author of many award-winning books for children, including The Summer of the Swans, a Newbery Medal winner. The Pinballs was an ALA Notable Book. She is also the author of Goodbye, Chicken Little; The Two-Thousand-Pound Goldfish; and the popular Golly Sisters trilogy.

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      Book preview

      The Glory Girl - Betsy Byars

      The Glory Girl

      Betsy Byars

      TO ALAN MYERS

      Contents

      The Blue Bus

      A Secret Letter

      Downhill Disaster

      Anna’s Search

      The Phone Call

      The Bow-Legged Bank Robber

      A Missing Uncle

      Fugitive

      The Autographs

      The Man in Gray

      In the Middle of Galaxians

      The Incident at the Pizza Parlor

      Followed!

      Danger from Behind

      The Rockford Accident

      Overturned

      Dark Water

      The Rescue

      The Glory Family

      Return Performance

      The Last Good-bye

      A Biography of Betsy Byars

      The Blue Bus

      THE GLORY FAMILY BUS rumbled along the highway. The old tires wobbled. The engine missed. The windows and doors rattled. From time to time there was a loud bang as the engine backfired.

      Anna Glory was stretched out on one of the back seats of the bus, trying to sleep. She lay on her side with her coat over her like a blanket. Down the aisle the pale blue outfits of the Glory Gospel Singers waved and swayed on coat hangers, giving off the faint odor of sweat and Right Guard.

      The music her family had sung that night still sounded in Anna’s head. The songs had been written that way—to start hands clapping, feet tapping, to make people want to join in on the chorus.

      When He calls me,

      Calls me,

      Calls me,

      I will answer,

      Answer,

      Answer,

      And I’ll never,

      Never,

      Never,

      Answer, No.

      Yes, when He calls me

      Calls me,

      Calls me …

      Anna closed her eyes. The music, the lights, the clapping, swaying crowd—it all seemed the way life was meant to be. And she at the back of the auditorium, waiting to sell Glory albums and cassette tapes at intermission—she felt left out, not just from the music and the crowd, but somehow from the rest of the world.

      Anna sighed. She shifted on the hard seat. The Glory bus had once been a school bus, and the seats were worn slick from years of sliding, restless children.

      Anna was the only person in the history of the Glory family who could not carry a tune. There had been a brief time, when Anna was seven, when it had been hoped that she could learn to play the drums.

      Waiting for the drums to be delivered had been the happiest time of Anna’s life. She had imagined how important she would look, beating time on the silver-and-blue Wilson drums, crossing her arms different ways, hitting this drum and that one.

      But when the drums came and Anna held the sticks at last, she discovered that she could no more beat time than she could sing. She was clumsy. The drumsticks clattered to the floor. Again and again her father shouted, Anna, listen to the music!

      And finally the drums had gone to the twins. They, at age five, took to it like monkeys, and before the week was out, they were playing as if they had been doing it all their lives.

      Anyway, darling, her father had said, we need you to sit in the back and sell records.

      I don’t want to sell records, she’d said, starting to cry.

      He’d looked at her. None of the children ever whined or pleaded when their father got that expression on his face. You’ll get used to it, he had said, and then turned away.

      It had been five years, however, and Anna had not gotten used to it yet.

      She glanced up the aisle, past her mother’s head, which was lolling over the edge of the seat, past the twins’ legs kicking at each other, past the gold of Angel’s hair, to her father. Mr. Glory was driving the bus, holding a Pall Mall cigarette between his teeth. He had to steer with his whole body.

      Lately the blue bus had started to take on a will of its own. It went left when it was supposed to go right, swerved into the dirt beside the road for no reason, and Mr. Glory had to be ready for these unexpected moves. Mr. Glory sometimes seemed to be dealing with a team of willful mules instead of a bus.

      He trusted the bus, though. It gets us there, he would say when it was criticized for dying down at intersections or for stopping short and causing Mrs. Glory to slide out of her seat. Mr. Glory was proud that the bus had never had a flat, an oil change, or a breakdown in all the years he had been driving it.

      Anna’s eyes closed. Pall Mall smoke drifted to the back of the bus and hung in the stale, cold air. On wet days Anna felt she could smell old peanut butter sandwiches and sneakers, and if she reached down under the seats she could feel knots of bubble gum so old they were as hard as the metal.

      The Glory family’s songs seemed to hang in the still cold air of the bus, too.

      Sing with the Glorys

      Yes, come sing

      With the Glorys

      If you sing

      With the Glorys

      Then you’ll never

      Sing a-lone.

      When Anna heard that song, the Glory Gospel Singers’ theme song, the last number on the program, she would get up and move to the aisle where everybody could see her. Her father would step closer to the microphone, his guitar shifted out of the way, on his hip.

      "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve enjoyed listening to the songs of the Glory Gospel Singers tonight—well, you can have all the songs you’ve heard on one long-playing album or cassette tape for the low, low price of eight dollars. That’s a lot of singing for eight dollars.

      At the back of the auditorium one of the Glory girls, our little Anna—she can’t sing, but ain’t she pretty?—she’ll be waiting to help you with your purchases. Hold up your hand, darling, so they can see where you’re at.

      Dutifully Anna would hold up her hand, wave, and then move back out of the light.

      And in the meantime, folks, remember, all the Glory family—Maudine, the twins Joshua and Matthew, our lead singer Angel, and yours truly, John Glory—want you to—

      While Mr. Glory was introducing the family, Anna would sit at her table and unlock her cash box. She would straighten the stacks of records and cassette tapes as inside the auditorium the music swelled.

      Sing with the Glorys

      Yes, come sing

      With the Glorys

      If you sing With the Glorys

      Then you’ll never,

      Never,

      Never!

      Siiiinnnnnng a-lone!

      On the back seat of the bus Anna pulled her coat up around her neck. She closed her eyes. Her body slid on the worn seat as the old bus stubbornly swerved to the left for no reason, and Mr. Glory, with a puff on his Pall Mall, brought it back to the road again.

      A Secret Letter

      THE NEIGHBORS COMPLAINED ABOUT the Glorys’ house. There was no grass in the front yard. A second school bus, also painted blue, was on concrete blocks in the side yard. Kudzu vines crept closer every summer and had already captured the pine trees in the back.

      When the Glorys were away, the house looked as if it had been abandoned. When they were at home,

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