After Peaches Read Online Free PDF Page B

already over. I grabbed the knives and forks from the table and dropped them with a clatter onto the plates. Mamá ran water in the sink, and Papá stayed in his seat because, with two other people moving around in the tiny kitchen, he had no room to get up. He stared at the vinyl tabletop as though it might solve all our problems.
    â€œIt’s not so easy,” Mamá said as she scrubbed. “First of all, we would need to find a place for all of our things. That costs money. Gas for traveling costs money, and where would we stay while we’re on the farms? José and the others always have somewhere to stay because the farms give housing to foreign workers, but we would have to find our own spot. That would take time and money, and so we’d still be no better off than we are here.”
    â€œBut it doesn’t have to be that way,” I said, snatching a frayed pink dishtowel from a hook at the edge of the counter. “Julie’s family has a big tent that they haven’t used in years. Ms. Norton said that we could borrow it whenever we want to. She said there are campsites all over British Columbia, and some only cost a dollar a night. That’s much less than rent. And the other great thing is that Julie has a big basement with plenty of space in it. We don’t have much stuff, and I’m sure they’d let us keep it there if we asked.”
    I’d written all this stuff in my notebook that day, and I was ready for any excuse my parents could think up. Ricardo would have been proud of me. No matter what, I was going to win this discussion. It was my only shot at a summer with enough Normal Canadian Kid stories for my book. If I wrote about all the places we camped, I wouldn’t even have to mention that I worked with my parents during the day.
    Our few pieces of furniture and our winter clothes wouldn’t take up much space in Julie’s basement, and best of all, if our things were at her place, we’d have to come back here to live instead of going somewhere else. I wouldn’t have to start all over again at a whole new school that might have even more Robbie Zecs than this one, and I wouldn’t have to leave behind my only friend in the whole country.
    My parents looked at each other. They weren’t disagreeing with me anymore, so I kept talking as fast as I could. “We could travel all the way across, just like you said, Papá. First strawberries and raspberries in the Fraser Valley. Later cherries and peaches on the edge of the desert. We’ll meet all sorts of people and see a million places, and I’ll help you in the fields every day, and after peaches, we’ll be rich! And we can come back here and choose any apartment we want. Maybe even one in the big buildings downtown, with a pool, or a garden on the roof!”
    At last they smiled. Mamá even laughed.“I think,” she said, “we’d have to invest in some new furniture if we wanted one of those fancy apartments. They wouldn’t want lawn chairs in their kitchens and children sleeping on sofas.”
    She was teasing, of course—and changing the subject—but she looked less worried than she had since we got that letter about the rent going up.
    â€œSo you’ll think about it?” I asked.
    Papá sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “A lot depends on the charity of Julie’s mother…”
    I bit my tongue and shook out my towel in a noisy thwap . I knew they hated accepting charity, but I also knew that they really liked Ms. Norton, and that she’d be more than happy to help.
    â€œWe’ll think about it,” Papá said finally, and I tossed my towel onto the counter and bounded across the kitchen to hug him.

CHAPTER 7
Strawberries
    After that, I spent every spare moment researching farms on the Internet, helping my mother pack or learning to set up the big green tent in Julie’s backyard. Ms. Norton not