Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine Read Free Book Online Page A

was never as good at it as them. And I didn’t want to be doing it, not all the time, not just because there was no one else, and that must have showed. I wasn’t Mum and Dad, and when Stroma threw a tantrum, you knew it wasn’t just about her bathing suit or the bath mat from her dolls’ house or the brown bit on a banana. It was because everything had caved in on top of her and she’d had enough.
    I knew already there was no such thing as a normal family. You might think you’ve got one, but something always happens to prove you wrong. There were kids at school worse off than us, way worse—that’s what I kept telling myself. And I knew my parents were good people. It wasn’t their fault something bad happened to them.
    But after Jack died, they protected themselves by refusing to love us, the kids who had dying still to do. And it fell to us to keep ourselves alive until somebody remembered we were there.

Eight
    The next day we were sitting in the cafeteria, me and Bee, watching some of the boys from her class have this food fight. She said, “How are they doing that without getting a hair out of place? Is there that much gel in there?”
    I laughed and said, “Jack used to have a thing about some of the girls here too.”
    â€œWhat thing?” she said.
    â€œHe used to rant about the taste of lip gloss and the fact they spent all their time looking at themselves in reflective surfaces. He used to make me laugh so hard. I had to promise never to be one of them.”
    â€œWell, you’re not,” Bee said. “And neither am I.” She got up to put her stuff in the bin, and I watched her and so did everyone else. I so wished that Jack was still around to meet Bee. It was like a sudden ache in my side, that never happening. He’d have liked her asmuch as I did. I wanted to tell her that, but I didn’t know how to say it, so I said nothing.
    â€œWhat are you up to tonight?” she asked while I was searching in my bag for the homework I couldn’t remember doing.
    â€œCooking dinner, giving Stroma a bath, putting her to bed, and hiding in my room,” I said, counting things off on my fingers, letting my thumb hang down.
    â€œWhy don’t you two stay at mine?” she said. “Carl won’t mind.”
    â€œYeah, and it would give my mum a break,” I said, trying to make it sound funnier than it was.
    Bee said, “What’s the thing with your mum?”
    â€œIt’s a ‘she’s never going to get over her son dying’ thing.”
    She asked if Mum was sick.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “If she was sick, then the medicine would work, I suppose. I think she’s just the saddest person ever.”
    â€œOh God,” Bee said. “Imagine how she must feel.”
    I said she didn’t leave a lot to the imagination. I said she made it pretty clear.
    Bee looked at me like she was working something out. “Are you pissed off at her?”
    â€œNot a lot of point in that,” I said. “There’s no one to be pissed off at. She’s not in there.”
    After school I phoned Mum on my mobile. Shedidn’t answer, of course, but I left a message, with Bee’s phone number, just in case she needed anything. I felt funny about leaving her for the night, like she was my kid or something, like she should have a babysitter. I said to call me if she wanted us home, and I almost wished she would, but I knew she’d probably much prefer a quiet night in without us. I knew she’d barely notice we were gone.
    I watched Stroma clinging to Bee like glue on the walk home. I hoped Bee wasn’t claustrophobic.
    Stroma stopped dead in the street because she didn’t have her teddy or her pajamas. I nearly plowed into the back of her.
    Bee said, “You can wear one of my T-shirts.”
    â€œCan I use your toothbrush as well or will that be germs?” Stroma asked.