By the Book by Amanda Sellet EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Amanda Sellet
- Language: English
- Genre: Teen & Young Adult Siblings Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 5.1 MB
- Price: Free
The beginning of the upending of my life took place on
a sweltering August afternoon, the summer before my sophomore year of
high school. I was lying on the couch, immersed in the story of a genteel
family with too many daughters and not enough property. The slow rotation
of the ceiling fan ruffled the pages of my book. If I held perfectly still, it was
possible not to sweat.
“Mary,” said my mother’s voice, summoning me back to the present. “Can
I see you in my office?”
There was no clap of thunder or eerie howling in the distance. The sun
continued to blaze down from a cloudless sky—or so I imagined, not having
been outside. Apart from the mild annoyance of being interrupted in the
middle of a crucial scene, I had no presentiment of doom. After fumbling for
my bookmark, which had slipped between cushions, I levered myself upright.
When I hobbled into the office on limbs stiff from too many hours in the
same position, I was surprised to see my father seated at one end of the desk.
Usually he (and Mom) preferred it when he worked in a different room.
“What’s up?” I asked, lifting a stack of literary journals from the
threadbare armchair so I could sit.
“Mary.” Dad leaned forward on his stool, hands cupping his knees. “How
would you like a new . . . lunchbox?”
Mom winced.
“The one I have is fine. Why?” Being observant by nature—reasonably
skilled at reading a room, deciphering subtext, sniffing out the nuances of
human behavior—I had an inkling there was more to come.
Dad blotted his temple with the back of his wrist. “Well. As you know,
there are things in this life that endure, and others that are more—” He
paused, squinting at a framed poster of the Bloomsbury Group, as if one of
them might supply the missing phrase. “Transitory.”
“And you think my lunchbox is going to stop existing?” I looked to my
mother for enlightenment.
She inhaled as if preparing to plunge into the watery deep. “What your
father is trying to say is that you have to change schools.”
Dumbfounded, I struggled to make sense of her words. I’d been at the
same school since I was three, a ramshackle on-campus facility catering
mostly to the children of professors. It was small, and smelled like old shoes
when it rained, but it was also a second home. I knew every rip in the carpet
and limp beanbag. “Are you serious?” I finally managed to ask.
“The school’s grant wasn’t renewed.” Among my mother’s gifts was the
ability to pack a world of disapproval into the briefest of utterances.
“And they just figured this out? Summer’s almost over.”
The two of them exchanged a furtive glance.
“The possibility presented itself some time ago, but the situation wasn’t
definitive until quite recently.” Dad gestured vaguely. “A month or so—”
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