Fault Lines by Brenda Ortega Read Free Book Online Page B

every-which-way. I could see her pajamas where the bed covers weren’t pulled up. She looked like she’d never been up.
    “Oh, Dani’s here,” Mrs. Hammond said in a scratchy voice I barely recognized. “You two make sure you eat.”
    “OK,” Justine said, and she turned to leave.
    I didn’t know what to say. Mrs. Hammond rolled over, so I followed Justine out.
    “Is she sick?”
    Justine shook her head. “Do you want something to eat?”
    “No, I already ate. Do you?”
    “I’m not hungry.”
    So we just watched TV for a couple hours till it was time for me to go home for dinner. Mrs. Hammond still hadn’t come out of her bedroom, and I realized in my gut – sinking with each passing minute – that her strange behavior was not new to Justine. I’d never seen her mom act any way but loving and over-protective, but Justine acted like her lying in bed all day was normal.
    I asked if she wanted to eat at my house, but she didn’t feel like it. “What will you have for dinner?” I said.
    “I’ll find something.”
    It had been a long weekend. We’d seen her father’s casket lowered into a hole six feet down, and his death became horribly real. He would never again be sitting in his chair reading the newspaper, or taking a nap snoring on the couch, or asking us about school, or coming to my door at dusk, still in his clothes from work, and walking Justine down the empty street.
    I watched Justine stare at the TV before letting myself out the front door and hopping over the shrubs to cut across her front yard. She needed to eat, but I couldn’t make her. Still I ached for her. I wanted to help. I’d felt my own pain on a smaller scale – the “For Sale” sign in front of my yard, my parents either fighting or silent, Mike turning bad and linking up with the mean kids – and I wished our sadness could bring us together. But it didn’t. All we would have needed to do was talk, share, cry – rely on each other. But we didn’t. We retreated into ourselves, and the longer we stayed there, the harder it was to return.
    Every new, gloomy event in our lives took us further away, like zooming out of a picture in Google Earth – our vision of each other shrinking with each click of the minus button.
    Little did I know as I walked down the street, my view was about to shrivel down to nothing.

then
    I didn’t see the other stink bomb coming
    As soon as I walked in the door at home, I knew something was up. Bobby sat on the couch looking worried, and Dad stood in front of him with the phone.
    “Dani, I’m glad you’re home, because I just called Justine’s house,” Dad said. “Please sit down. Your mother is getting Mike upstairs.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “Just, please, have a seat.” He frowned and scratched his arm roughly back and forth like he’d had way too much caffeine. “We’re having a meeting.”
    Our last family meeting – also the first – had been when my dad lost his job in April. Dad had sat on the couch between me and Bobby, not speaking but with his arm around me and one hand on Bobby’s knee. Mom talked, saying things would be hard, saying, “Dani, you want a new bike. Mike, a drum set. I know you want a game system, Bobby. But we don’t have money for extras right now.”
    I felt scared at that meeting. I wanted to say, “I don’t need a bike. I don’t need anything extra.” But instead I just sat there like everyone else.
    I felt scared again as Mom came downstairs with Mike scowling behind her. Bobby and me were on the couch, and Mike sat in the chair. Dad stayed standing.
    “Your dad and I need to talk with you about some very big changes we need to make,” Mom said. As she and Dad scanned their eyes across us three kids, his suddenly looked flat and dead. Hers burned with too much energy.
    “It’s been hard finding a time to have this meeting, especially since Mr. Hammond died, but we couldn’t wait any longer,” she said. “We didn’t want you