Brittany Bends by Kristine Grayson Read Free Book Online Page A

shoves Ivan to one side. “I told you get the burger. I didn’t say you could cut up the onions and green peppers. For one thing, you have to peel the onion first.”
    They’re busy, and Eric has already left the room.
    If you can call the kitchen a room. It took me a long time to do that. Because the kitchen doesn’t have a lot of walls, or maybe it has too many, only they’re not really walls, they’re more like strips of wall that might someday grow up to be pillars.
    The kitchen was once closed in, or at least that’s what Eric says. Karl got “a bee up his butt” (Eric again) and decided to make the kitchen “open concept” but never really finished. So Karl took out the walls that didn’t carry the weight of the second story, making sure that the parts that remained could handle the weight so the house wouldn’t collapse in on itself.
    Now the kitchen has more entrances than solid walls. I just came in the back door, which, as far as I can tell, was always in that spot. The basement door (which closes) is kitty-corner from the back door, and directly across from the back door is the missing wall/hallway that leads to the dining room.
    The entrance to my left opens to the refrigerator room, because Mom got some kind of coupon or prize or something and won this stainless steel restaurant-size refrigerator with matching freezer, and of course none of that fits into the real kitchen. But the refrigerator does let the food stay organized. (The little labels that Mom glued to the shelves [like Milk only! ] help.)
    There’s a second freezer in there for the deer meat from hunting season, and a third freezer for the fish that some family members catch on weekends, and behind all of it is a door that I can’t touch, built into the wall, and locked with a combination padlock and one of those touch security locks. That’s the gun cabinet, which I’ve only seen inside of once. Filled with long guns (rifles?) and two smaller guns on a shelf.
    Karl won’t let anyone who’s not certified near the gun cabinet, and he changes the combinations every three days, only telling the trusted three (Mom, Lise, and Anna—the only ones qualified) what the combination actually is.
    When you stand, like I am, right in front of the back door, you face the table and the stove, where some cabinets remain. The sink is to the right, and it’s a huge sink. (They call it a “farm sink,” for reasons I’ll never understand.) Next to the basement door is another door that leads to the garage. (You have to go down some steps to get there.)
    If I come in the house through the back door, it always takes me a minute to get my bearings. When I first moved in, I’d always take the wrong door, usually ending up in the refrigerator room, facing the gun cabinet. Everyone thought I was obsessed with the guns, when really, I was just lost.
    The smell of sweet onions hits me, and I blink. Anna is scraping a cutting board into the gigantic pot. I see onions and green peppers.
    Ivan grins at me as he grabs the brown sugar off the table. “Sloppy Joes,” he says happily. It’s his favorite meal and he asks for it all the time, so apparently, Mom decided he needs to learn how to cook it.
    I nod. I know Ivan. He’s going to ask more questions about my job interview.
    “Where are the buns?” I ask before he can open his mouth again.
    “Oh, dang!” he says.
    “Ivan,” Anna says, sounding just like Mom. “Language.”
    “Sorry.” He heads to dry storage, which is a cabinet near the double doors to the basement and garage.
    I use that moment to make my escape.
    Only Beauregard notices. He watches and whines just a little. I get a sense he would follow me if he could.
    The animals in the household—and there are always a bunch of animals—love me. I have no idea why. If I didn’t keep my door closed, they’d join me on the bed, like they did when I first moved in. In fact, the animals were one reason why I got my own space in the first