100 Days and 99 Nights Read Online Free PDF Page B

thundercloud of real memory crossed back over his face. Poor Ike, if only he could imagine like me.
    But then, as the days began to fall like raindrops, I couldn’t keep running between them and pretending I was not getting wet. So, as each day got easier for Ike because he had gotten used to being soaked, it got worse for me. Soon I was drenched and shivering.
    One night when Ike and I were having dinner and Mom was in the shower, the phone rang.
    “Hello, may I speak with your daddy?” asked a man’s voice.
    “One second,” I replied out of habit.
    “Thank you. I’ll hold.”
    I put the phone down on the counter, turned to yell “Dad!” and swallowed the word whole as I realized what I had done, and now I didn’t know what to do. Ike slow-turned to me from the table, his mouth filled with steak and potatoes. “ ’At’sa atter?”
    I didn’t know what to do. The phone lay there. Mom was upstairs. And Ike just stared.
    “It’s for Dad.”
    “He’s not here.”
    “I know, but I . . . forgot.”
    Ike slurped up a final forkful of green beans and circled around me to the phone.
    “Hello? He’s . . .”
    The man on the other end of the line interrupted Ike thinking he was Dad and started to talk and talk. I watched Ike listen and listen and every few seconds try to say something to set him straight. But I could hear the man just keep on talking.
    “Ike? Who is it?” Mom stood at the door toweling her hair. Ike shrugged. Mom made her squishy concerned face and opened her hand for the phone. Ike passed it to her. I could still hear the man on the other end talking.
    “Hello? Yes, who is this? No, I’m sorry, we are not . . . no . . . I’m sure the Caribbean is beautiful but . . . I’m sorry, we are not interested.” And before the man could say another word, she hung up.
    “Very funny, Ike.” She crossed to the sink to start washing the dishes. “A Caribbean cruise. Very funny indeed. Finish your dinner, you two.”
    After answering that one call I couldn’t pretend anymore that it was just “bad luck” that I kept missing Dad and I started to just miss Dad. And after Mom hung up the phone I made my very first rule: Don’t answer the phone. So I didn’t.
    With Dad gone, every day passed at a hippo’s clumping pace. After dinner I crisscrossed off each date from the calendar thumbtacked above my bed. Then I dove down between my covers and tried to sleep. There was no blankie to cuddle, so instead each night I adopted one of my stuffed animals. I started with A (aardvark) and was up to I (inchworm).
    When I finished the alphabet with Zelda my zebra, I’d just start again.
    Tight-gripping Ida my inchworm’s ear, I wished my father, Sergeant August Aloysius McCarther the Third, had tucked me in. Then I squeeze-closed my eyes and dreamed my wish.
    Inchworm
    When I lost my absolute first tooth, the tooth fairy gave me Ida my inchworm. She is much longer than an inch and has green and yellow fuzz and a big red-mouthed smile. I put my tooth under the pillow and the next morning the tooth was gone and Ida had inched into its place. Back then, I believed in the tooth fairy.
    I shoveled clumpy mounds of brown-sugared oatmeal into my mouth and angrily stewed at Ike while he, on purpose to bother me, poked at his.
    Every morning everything happened differently from the morning before it. With Dad away there was no “routine.”
    Sometimes Ike would wake before me, sometimes he wouldn’t. Sometimes he’d pound on the bathroom door, sometimes he wouldn’t. Sometimes cereal was out, sometimes it wasn’t. I looked up at the clock when the big hand clicked upright to the twelve. That was the same. Thud! That was the same. Yes. The newspaper hit the front door. But now the switch had broken. Ike lazily played with his food. The stairs silent, the muffled scuffling sound of Mom getting dressed upstairs, no big rush, no jumble of words, no juggling of bags. No “routine.” No fundamental plan.
    “Eat,” I