100 Days and 99 Nights Read Online Free PDF Page A

time,” Ms. Pitcher, my teacher, threw out to the class. “How many daddies or mommies are away?”
    Open hands sprouted like spring flowers. Arthur’s father was in the air force and Martina’s mom was in the marines, Pedro’s pop was in the paratroopers and Brid-get’s older brother was in the navy.
    I wasn’t alone.
    “Why?” Ms. Pitcher pop-quizzed. “Why?”
    That was a hard question. Why, I wondered. There was a war. He was in the army. The president. Duty. He was a McCarther. To protect me . . .
    “Because that’s how long a tour of duty is,” replied Pedro. “When they go to fight they are sent for one hundred days and ninety-nine nights. After they do this, they come home.”
    “Very good, Pedro. A tour of duty.”
    “It’s a long time.” The words rolled heavily from my lips and lazy-lolled across my desk.
    “Not really, Esme, no. If you look at these days differently it will go by — like that.” Ms. Pitcher snapped her fingers to emphasize the “like that” part.
    “One hundred days and ninety-nine nights sounds like forever, but it is also only fifteen Saturdays, and that doesn’t. And if you say three months, well, that doesn’t seem like a long haul at all.”
    Arthur, Pedro, Martina and me all forced smiles and gratefully agreed, but no matter how our teacher added, subtracted, multiplied, or divided the days, to us, it was still an awfully long time.
    After lunch, Martina and I playground-played on the seesaw. We tried to count one hundred times up and ninety-nine times down, but somewhere around fifty we would forget and have to start again.
    Martina and I were best friends. We sat across from each other in class, sat across from each other at lunch, and sat across from each other on the seesaw during recess. She had long brown hair and short brown eyes, just like me. And light brown skin and heavy brown eyebrows, not at all like me.
    Ms. Pitcher said we were like “two peas in a pod.” We had no idea what she meant, and since neither of us really liked peas we didn’t consider it any sort of compliment. But since Ms. Pitcher was a grown-up and our teacher and we mostly liked her, we forced smiles and sort of agreed.
    “Let’s play king and queen,” Martina requested. One of the reasons we liked each other so much was because we both loved to play made-up games.
    “And they are our villagers!” I added, motioning to our playground-scattered classmates.
    Slowly and carefully, I eased off my side of the “see” and then pushed down with all my weight to gently let her off her side, the “saw.”
    We climbed the cold metal bars to the top of the jungle gym, where we could see our whole playground kingdom.
    Pedro and Arthur were playing catch in the far corner. Bridget and her little brother, Walter, were wandering near the swings. Richie C. and Georgina B., whom Martina and I did not get along with so much, were hogging the water fountain. Ike was trampolining his butt against the chain-link fence, arguing with his friend Stony Jackson. For best friends they sure liked to argue a lot.
    “Ike!” I yelled to get his attention, but the playground was too loud. Stony was tiny for his age, and Ike tall for his, so he towered over his friend. But Stony was “tough as nails and had a chip on his shoulder.” At least that is what Dad had once admiringly observed while we were sitting on the front stoop watching them play-wrestle. Dads can be silly.
    The two boys stopped arguing and scrambled happily around the swings, playing tag.
    “You be the queen,” Martina barely suggested and mostly ordered.
    “On Monday you were the teacher and I was the student — remember?” I reminded her.
    “But yesterday you were the princess and I was the evil stepped-on sister!”
    “Evil stepsister.” As soon as the correction slipped my lips, I realized I shouldn’t have said that and that I would be the queen today.
    “Okay, I’ll be the queen first. Then how about we switch in the