Cured by Bethany Wiggins EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Bethany Wiggins
- Language: English
- Genre: Teen & Young Adult Fiction about Siblings
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
A person can survive on sixty pounds of beans and three hundred pounds of
rice a year. Dinner in the Bloom home tonight is beans and rice for the
365th night in a row. And we ran out of pepper yesterday.
I stare down at my plate of food and frown at the brown bean juice
seeping past the scoop of white rice. My empty stomach doesn’t even
rumble.
“Eat up before it gets cold,” Dad says with forced enthusiasm. “And
when you’re done, you can bring a plate out to Uncle Rob.”
I open my mouth to complain—
“And before you whine about the food, think of all the kids who are
going to bed hungry tonight.”
I sigh and put a bite in my mouth. As I chew, I stare at the framed
embroidery hanging on the wall across the table from me: Faith and Hope
for the Future. It is made with purple and red embroidery floss and has
white needlepoint lilies with green stems sewn around the words. That’s the
first one Mom made.
I look at the empty chair below the framed embroidery saying, and my
heart aches like it has a hole in it. The chair has been empty for almost a
year and a half. Mom says time will make Dean’s absence easier to bear—
I’m surprised she hasn’t embroidered that yet. Time hasn’t helped. It has
only made me miss my brother more—made the hole in my heart bigger.
I can feel Dad’s eyes on me, and a wave of dread makes my hands cold. I
set my fork down and look at him, wondering if he can tell that I am
planning something dangerous. He wipes his mouth with a stained cloth
napkin. “Your hair’s getting too long, Jack. Maybe Mom should buzz it
tomorrow.”
I force myself not to sigh with relief and run a hand over my head. Too
long means my hair is finally long enough to hide my scalp when I am
standing in sunlight. It means it is finally long enough to stick up a little bit
in the morning when I get out of bed. It means I am a little less ugly than
normal.
“She’s . . .” Mom clears her throat. “He’s still good for a few weeks.”
I gulp down another bite of beans and rice and stare at my plate. I won’t
be here in a few weeks. I won’t be here tomorrow.
“But—”
“No one who looks at Jack will see anything but a boy,” Mom says,
cutting off Dad. “Sometimes even I forget what Jack really is.”
“Yeah,” Chris says. “I don’t remember you ever looking like a youknow-what.” He’s eight. I stopped looking like a girl when he was five.
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