Hush by Jacqueline Woodson Read Free Book Online

“A palindrome. Backward and forward the same thing. Anna. Easy to spell. Easy to say. Easy to remember. Turn it completely around and it’s the same thing.” She swallowed and stared glassy-eyed at the television. “Anna,” she said. “Forever and ever. Amen.”
    “Evie,” I said, even though she hadn’t asked. “Anna and Evie.”
    “Evie’s a stupid name,” Cameron said. “Why the hell would you call yourself that?”
    I stared a fire into the side of her face, another into her elbow, a third into her thigh right where her stupid short skirt stopped and brown leg began. “It’s mine,” I said. “That’s why.”
    “Oh—and that’s supposed to be a good reason.”
    I closed my eyes and watched her burn.

PART TWO

11
    I WANT TO TELL YOU WHERE WE ARE NOW, BUT I’m afraid. I want to say Toswiah and Cameron still are— only they’re Evie and Anna now. World—please do remember me. I still am. Taller now. Still quiet. Sometimes I dance. Mama makes biscuits sometimes still. Even though she uses a mix now, I eat them the same way I always have—hot out of the oven, standing by the stove. Some days Anna still calls me immature. When we fight, Mama says It’s because you two are too close in age, and Anna gets that look—her eyebrows shooting up and out like a bat’s wings, her lips getting thin. Fifteen months is fifteen months, she says. It makes all the difference. Anna is fifteen. The school we’re at now goes from sixth grade through twelfth. When Anna sees me in the hallways, she smiles and keeps walking. Even though she doesn’t have many friends yet, she doesn’t want to take the chance of being seen with someone in the lower school. Some evenings, I sneak her favorite sweater—the one with autumn colors in it, brown and gold and orange—out of the closet and into my knapsack. I don’t put the sweater on until I’m in class, though. When I wear it, the girls in my class reach out to feel it and say nice things to me.
    “Where’d you get it?” they ask.
    “In San Francisco,” I say. “Where I used to live.”
    Then someone always starts singing the Rice-A-Roni song from the old commercial they show on cable, until the others are laughing. Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat! That’s what people here know about San Francisco, the stupid commercial about a box of rice.
    “There’re other things there,” I say. “Anyway, I don’t even think Rice-A-Roni’s made there!”
    “What other things?” a girl named Toswiah asks, her eyebrows coming together all mean on her face. “You trying to say San Francisco’s better or something?”
    “No,” I say, walking away, pulling the sweater tighter around me.
    “I didn’t think you were. That sweater might be cute, but that doesn’t mean you get to start thinking you’re better than anybody!”
    Tonight I need to write. “ Afraid” is this hollowed-out place that sometimes feels bigger than I am. Most days my fear is as long as my shadow, as big as my family’s closet of skeletons.
    Can you see me here?

    A new girl comes to our class late in the year. I am in fourth grade. When people ask, we tell them we’re cousins. The new girl has a bump on each hand where a sixth finger used to be. When the others point to it and laugh, she hides her hands behind her back. I get up and stand beside her, wanting them to stop. The girl’s bottom lip trembles. “Whatever you do,” I whisper to her, “don’t let them see you cry.” The girl smiles. It’s a tiny, tiny smile. But I see it. Later I will touch the tiny bumps with my pointer finger and tell her to always think of them as beautiful.
    Look for the beauty, my mama says. Always look for the beauty. It’s in every single body you meet.
    The girl smiles. She has a pretty smile.

12
    THE TOSWIAH IN MY CLASS IS SMALL AND LOUD with a constant circle of friends around her. I have never heard this name before on another girl. When our teacher takes attendance, there is that split