Paper Things by Jennifer Richard Jacobson Read Free Book Online Page B

glue.
    “I love it,” I tell him. And I do.

“They want someone with experience,” says Gage. He and Briggs are sitting on Briggs’s love seat, looking at Briggs’s iPad.
    “Maybe they’ll train,” says Briggs, who is trying to be patient, but I can tell he’s sick of Gage coming up with a reason for not applying to every job. I know, and Briggs knows, that it’s not that Gage doesn’t
want
to work — he works harder than anyone. And he really, really, really wants to get a job so we can get an apartment. It’s just that he hates it when he asks and people tell him no.
    I look up from my math homework. “Who’s hiring?”
    “Jiffy Lube,” says Briggs. “It’s a service station — for cars.”
    “They want someone with experience,” says Gage.
    “How do you get experience?” I ask.
    “By working at a service station,” says Gage.
    “How do you work at a service station?”
    “By having experience,” says Gage.
    The circle game has become one of Gage and my favorite games. All of our longings are trapped in circles where there is no beginning and no end.
    “Hey,” Briggs says. “It just occurred to me — my boss’s brother owns a Jiffy Lube.”
    Both Gage and I look at Briggs like he just found a trapdoor.
    “Do you think it’s this one — the one that’s advertising?” Gage asks.
    “I don’t know,” says Briggs. “I could ask. No matter what, I could still tell him about you.”
    “Couldn’t hurt,” says Gage, letting his eyes speak a world of thanks.
    We leave it at that and don’t say anything more about a job tonight. Hopes are as delicate as butterfly wings: say too much, want something too much, and they’ll crumble. Instead, I tell Gage about staying at Sasha’s tomorrow night, which makes him
très
happy. Then we both make phone calls — me to Sasha, Gage to Chloe.
    Suddenly the evening feels a whole lot lighter. Briggs suggests we cook up some spaghetti and meatballs. Gage insists on a veggie, too. I open Briggs’s freezer and choose green beans.
    “Did you know,” I say, after we’ve cleared our plates and Gage has started on the washing, “that Louisa’s first book,
Flower Fables,
was published by George Briggs? Maybe one of your relatives knew Louisa May Alcott!”
    “Oh, yeah?” Briggs comes over and sits at the table with me. He takes my wrinkly Paper Things folder out from the stack of books.
    “Aren’t you gonna play with your paper dolls?” Briggs asks.
    “I can’t,” I say. “I need to write an introduction.” Anyway, I know from experience that there isn’t really enough room at Briggs’s for me to spread out my whole paper world and not have it stepped on.
    He opens my Paper Things folder and pulls out one of my kids.
    “Who’s this?” he asks.
    I tell him her name, but I keep my eyes on the book in front of me. It’s my way of telling him I can’t be distracted right now.
    “And who’s this?”
    “That’s Miles.”
    “Wow, Miles has seen some miles.”
    I laugh. It’s true. I’ve had Miles since the year Mama was dying. He’s a thin scrap of paper, wrinkled and faded.
    “What’s this?” Briggs points to the sprinkler at Miles’ feet.
    “It’s a sprinkler,” I say with my
we’re done now
voice.
    “Wow, that’s water spraying around. I couldn’t tell. I thought it was just more creases in the paper.”
    He rummages through the folder, and I’m afraid he’s going to ask me about each item and every person in it.
    I yank the folder out of his hands and place it at the bottom of the pile of books. He’s still clutching Miles, though.
    “Give,” I say, making a grab for him.
    But Briggs pulls his arm back playfully. And as quick as that, Miles tears in two.
    I can’t believe I’m only holding half of him in my fingers. Miles was the first person I ever cut out of a catalog. I have played with him in our apartment on Crest Street, at Sasha’s, and Janna’s, and every place we’ve stayed since.
    My eyes don’t