Cool in Tucson Read Online Free PDF

Besides, they were friends, understood each other, got along.  And she knew Janine’s resolve was fragile. 
    A little girl wanted her mother, of course.  Everybody knew that.  But what if Janine…every day now, underneath her unease about Delaney and her job, Sarah’s worries about Denny ran like a slow-moving dark river. 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
     
     
     
    When the alarm rang, Denny shut the noise off quickly and lay still a minute, thinking about the day ahead.  She had clean clothes ready and some money stashed, so she figured she had a fair shot at making this Tuesday an OK day.
    OK days didn’t just happen; they took planning, hard work, and attention to details.  Well, and some lying and stealing.
    She was ten years old, so she had to take the days as they came along.  Grown-ups ran the world, and they didn’t run it to suit kids.  But they didn’t always have as much control as they thought, either, so if you kept your eyes open you could do yourself some good around the edges.  She was beginning to be quite proud of the ways she had learned to do some good for herself.     
    It was important not to expect too much, so you didn’t get disappointed.  She knew better now than to look for really ring-a-ding days like the first half of last year, when Mom was just back from rehab and had a good job doing accounting in an office.  Mom was a whiz at her job, she said so every day.  She kept saying other things like, “Knowledge is power,” and “Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.”  Denny thought that was all pretty obvious but she wasn’t going to argue as long as Mom stayed sober and happy and there was food in the house. 
    All last fall until almost Christmas, they’d had spiffed-up extra-credit days together.  That’s how it felt, like they were turning in days to some invisible school counselor, showing off clean clothes and brushed hair and good grades in social studies, so they could get to the head of whatever class Mom was enrolled in.  They’d start with cheery Leave-It-To-Beaver breakfasts, Denny with a dishtowel over the front of her clean school clothes and Mom making her face beautiful for work.  As Denny walked away toward the school bus stop, Mom would be waving from the doorway of their house.   Smiling back through the bus window, Denny knew she could count on a good dinner and help with homework later if she needed it.
    Something about Christmas made Mom moody and sad, though, and in January she started keeping beer in the refrigerator again.  By the end of February she was calling in sick about one day a week, and when the company announced layoffs at the end of March she was one of the first to be let go.  She got unemployment for a while, so although they ate a lot of beans and macaroni they had a roof over their heads, as Mom said, while she looked for something new.  She would make Denny laugh after school, describing the appointments she went to, imitating the really stupid people who luckily  hadn’t offered her a job. 
    She told Denny not to worry.  Everybody knew she was a whiz at anything to do on a computer.  But everybody wasn’t calling.  In fact nobody called about anything, and the longer she stayed home the less housework she seemed to get done. 
    By May they began to have some really bad days, when there was hardly anything in the house to eat, Mom was sleeping like a stone when she left for school, and Denny couldn’t find any clean socks or lunch money. 
    Sometimes the house was empty when Denny got home, and Mom came in late and made a lot of noise getting into bed.  When Denny was hungry she woke up easily and had trouble going back to sleep, so the bad day was followed by a rotten night and a worse tomorrow.
    In June Mom had to borrow money from Aunt Sarah to pay the rent.
    “Janine, now, don’t start this,” Aunt Sarah said, “I’m just getting back on my feet myself after the divorce.”
    “Well,