The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t know.” She looks up at her eyes in the rearview mirror. One of my barrettes has come loose from her hair, dangling down by her ear. “Let me think for a minute.”
    The field to our left is mostly dirt now, picked clean, only a few strips of stalk left over. But the field to our right is untouched, the corn still growing in neat, green rows. On the far side of the sky, I see the birds again. Their shadows pass the setting sun before they vanish for good, leaving us behind.

three
    W E ABANDON THE V OLKSWAGEN, LEAVE it right there on the side of the road, dead and unburied. We walk over a small hill, and then we can see three houses, far away from the road and from each other. My mother spends a long time looking at each one and then points to a white house with a white fence and says, “That one.” It’s farther than it looks, and by the time we step on the creaking front porch there are lightning bugs, the sky dark with night.
    The lady who answers the door opens it only an inch, just enough to see us with one of her light blue eyes. She says she will call someone for us, but does not invite us in. “Who is it you’d like me to call, dear?” she asks.
    My mother opens her mouth to speak, but no words come out.
    “Eileen,” I say.
    My mother shakes her head and writes something on a gum wrapper from her purse. “Could you please call Merle Mitchell? It’ll be long distance to Kerrville, I think. I can give you some money.”
    “No no,” the lady says, taking the wrapper. “It’s fine.” She shuts the door behind her, locks it.
    I look up at my mother. “She’s acting like we’re killers .”
    “Well, we could be for all she knows. How is she supposed to know?”
    I look at our reflection in the window, and I realize that it is true: neither of us looks like a normal person. I am still wearing the stupid pink-and-white dress, and my mother looks a little crazy, the barrette still hanging down by her ear, trails of mascara under her eyes from when she was crying.
    “That’s exactly right,” she says. “If ever some people come knocking on our door and I’m not home, I don’t want you to let them in either. I don’t even want you to answer the door.”
    “But what if their car broke down?”
    “Too bad for them.”
    The lady opens the door just an inch again and tells us Mr. Mitchell said he would leave right away. We can wait on the porch, she says. She’ll leave the light on.
    “Thank you so much,” my mother says. “Thank you.”
    The lady shuts the door, opens it again, and asks if she can bring us a bowl of ice cream.
    I ask what kind, and my mother pinches the back of my elbow. I can see the lady’s mouth through the door, her lips bluish and thin. “Um, I’m not sure, dear,” she says. “I’ll have to check and see what we have.” My mother says she’ll just have a glass of water, if that isn’t too much trouble.
    When the door shuts again, she tells me it’s rude to ask what kind, and that beggars can’t be choosers. I’m sick of her saying this to me.
    “We’re not beggars,” I say. “Our car just broke down.”
    The lady comes back with a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream and a glass of water, and since we are sitting on the steps now, she has to stretch to pass it to us so she can stay inside, keeping one foot behind the door, like a baseball player getting ready to steal home. I tell her thank you, and she smiles. She is younger than I thought she was, wearing an apron over a flowered dress, tennis shoes on her feet.
    “Say thank you,” my mother whispers.
    “I already said it.”
    “Say it again.”
    I say thank you again.
    “Certainly,” the lady says, and shuts the door again. We both look down at the green ice cream.
    “I don’t like mint chocolate chip,” I say.
    My mother nods. “Yes. I know.”
    “It’s the only kind I don’t like.”
    She closes her eyes. “Yes, Evelyn, I know.”
    She says she will eat the ice cream if I won’t, and