Maxine by Claire Wilkshire Read Free Book Online

that might be going too far.
    Just die, Maxine says, dropping a tiny pellet into a bowl. The blue fins flicker eagerly. Everyone knows you’re not supposed to give pets as gifts.
    She drops another pellet.
    Couldn’t you get some bacterial thing from the water? Couldn’t you starve when I forget to feed you?
    Kyle knew about the workshop so he didn’t come then but the next day is Friday and around the middle of the afternoon she hears his feet on the stairs outside, his quick knock and the front door opening, and soon they are in the kitchen looking for something to eat.
    Look, I don’t know about homework, OK? I don’t remember how. I don’t know what you’re supposed to know.
    I’m supposed to know about the book of Job, and it’s really boring and I don’t understand it.
    Maxine sighs but Kyle appears not to take it personally. Not personally enough.
    I thought, she says, you were here to play computer games.
    I have to do some homework before I play on the computer. It’s a rule. How about, he suggests, if you read the first two chapters and I read the first two and then we talk about it?
    Me , read it?
    Yeah. Otherwise how can you talk about it?
    But I don’t have homework. I don’t need to read it.
    You do if you’re going to talk about it.
    But—
    You might learn something useful. For your novel.
    You barge in here and hog the computer and now you’re wanting me to read the Bible. Well forget it, I’ve already read some and it’s long. But by now Kyle knows her well enough to grin and wait. And so it comes to pass that Maxine digs out the faded red Bible she’d been given by her grandmother and lies on the couch with Job, chapters 1 and 2, while Kyle reads them off the Internet.
    It’s a bit much, says Maxine. I mean, he didn’t do anything, and just because the Enemy of Man comes along and says he should be afflicted, God goes along with it. I don’t think that shows much strength of character on God’s part, do you?
    Maxine? I don’t think that’s what they want us to learn.
    Oh. Well, then, how about a fact check. What, uh, let me see. What does God do to Job?
    He takes everything away and smotes him with boils.
    Smites. And it’s the scab, not boils.
    Mine says boils.
    Let me see that. Maxine hops up and scrutinizes the online text. OK, what do you think would be worse, boils or scab?
    Maxine?
    Well I’m just pointing out the interesting parts. It’s not my fault if they don’t want you to learn anything.
    How come you have a bookmark in right there?
    None of your business. So, what have we learned then?
    There’s different words for the same things?
    Correct. It wasn’t written in English and you can translate one thing different ways.
    I think scabs because they’d be itchy all the time. I had a huge one in Bermuda from scraping my leg on a rock underwater when I was swimming? And it was itchy like forever. I think it might still be itchy sometimes.
    Do you miss Bermuda?
    All my friends are there. Like Ben and Amir. And I went swimming all the time in the sea. I hope we move back. You can come visit.

4
    december 2002
    k yle has discovered an Internet site with quizzes about countries, continents, and capitals. There’s a timer and a box where you type things in, and Maxine is hazy on the details but he’s keen for her to participate. He does these quizzes all the time, muttering as he types, country after country punched into the little box and if it’s the right name, it slides away and sits on the right spot on the map. He’ll ask Maxine to name all the countries in Africa and type her answers in. Kyle has done this so often he can name the capital of every country in the world, with the exception of the odd tiny island. Maxine’s geography is fuzzier than she would like to admit. She couldn’t believe Zaire didn’t exist. Just gone. She hadn’t got