Never Fall Down: A Novel by Patricia McCormick Read Free Book Online Page A

Khmer Rouge with the little ax, he comes to the place where we practice and tells us to come now. All the big leader here, and they want to hear us play. Now. Right now. Kha, he wet his pants. We all can see it. Mek, he goes pale. The Khmer Rouge, he put his hand on his ax.
    I tell him it’s okay, we know the songs.
    Right away he take us to a wooden stage in the middle of the grass. Kha, this boy who is my shadow, walk so close he like in my pocket. Mek, he hang his head like walking to his death. All around us dark. But we can see people already sitting on the ground, thousand people, waiting for the show, all Khmer Rouge, with gun, with ax, with suspicious face.
    Mek, he whisper in my ear. “You lead,” he says. “I can’t remember.”
    I close my eye and hold the bamboo stick in the air. “Touch it light,” I hear the old man say. “Like hummingbird wing.” I let the stick drop, and one note, one tiny ping, float into the air.
    I wait a thousand year in that next second and then Kha join in, then one second later, the other kid. We play, we finish the song, we don’t wait, we start another one, then another and another. We play all the song, no stopping, just playing. Only playing, not even hearing. We play, we sing, we smile—big big big, all teeth, all gums—we sing how we love Angka, how the blood was spill to set us free, how happy we are now to live in this land of plenty.
    And then all the song are finished and we have no more. Only quiet. A gecko, high in the tree, he screech. Silence again.
    I can see in the dark many Khmer Rouge, all waiting, all watching to see what the most high-ranking guy will do. I study this guy. I stare at his hand. I don’t hear any clapping, only see hand moving. His hand, then all the hand. And we live one more day.
     
    I sneak into the building where Mek sleep that night. Not so scare to be out at night now. I think the Khmer Rouge won’t shoot me, now they like our music.
    I wake Mek up, tell him he save us kids. All of us. He save us from dying.
    But he says I save the kid, and him, too.
    I think this might be a little bit true, but also I know in my heart I’m saving myself. “It’s only surviving,” I say.
    Mek says he survive by dreaming. Sometimes even when he’s awake. Same dream every time. He dream of a place where the children don’t have to work in the field, where they sleep on the grass, and in the sky a spirit fly by and drop sugar on them.
    When he wake up, he think of his own children and wonder if maybe it’s better to die. “To live with nothing in your stomach and a gun in your face,” he says, “is that living or is that dying a little bit every day?”
     
    New rules after the high-ranking Khmer Rouge leave. Now no one can hunt for food. Eating by yourself is a sign of bad character, that you love yourself more than you love Angka.
    Another rule: no boy can fall in love with a girl. No girl can fall in love with a boy. Only thing you can love is Angka.
    Also the band, we play song sometimes at the nighttime meeting now. So the other kid can learn the word. So they can sing how much they love Angka.
     
    Many time when I play I keep my eye close. You look out the window, you can see the other kid working in the field, so tire, so hungry, almost dead. You see this, you think maybe you will feel sad. But you don’t feel anything. Only relief that you can be inside playing music, not working in the field.
    One time I open my eye and see in the field the Khmer Rouge hitting one boy, very skinny, very sick, trying to dig with his hands. The Khmer Rouge hit him and say, “Why you so lazy?” This is the hardworking boy, the boy who one time said I had bad character, the guy who got me sent to manure pile. This boy, he still work the hardest, always wanting the Khmer Rouge to like him. Now he fall down in the mud.
    These Khmer Rouge, they are monster. I watch this boy fall and for one minute I feel like happy, relief that this boy is now the one