Cures for Hunger Read Online Free PDF Page A

long balloons, none of this was appreciated. The sculptures returned to the trash, and the dolls, shortly after I gave them to the neighbor’s toddlers, unraveled and were left on the roadside so that it looked as if a pregnant woman had been carousing the valley night after night.
    As we were nearing home, I asked my mother why I had a purpose.
    â€œSo you can do something great for the world,” she said.
    Maybe this was why I always felt unsatisfied or craved to see something amazing. Whenever I learned about anything new, I couldn’t stop thinking about it—meditation or fishing, the police or my father’s other family. My mother had once told me how society had become corrupt and might end, and I’d thought about this until it seemed as if the destruction should happen any minute now. It would be the greatest story ever. There would be no more school, and I’d live in the mountains and fish and meditate forever, unless this wasn’t my purpose after all.
    â€œBut how can I know?” I practically yelled.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhat my purpose is?”
    â€œJust ask inside yourself,” she said. “All the answers you’ll ever need are inside you.”
    I sighed. Something had to happen right now, like in a novel. I wanted the sun to burn up the mountains, the sky to dissolve into the fields, the earth to melt into crystal blue water. But along the road, dead autumn grass resembled a dirty shag rug. Ten Speed appeared in the distance and zipped past, turning her head to take us in with her wide, empty eyes. And then the road before us was clear. A few naked trees leaned this way and that, hunched and bent and reaching, like old people.
    â€œDo you have any invisible friends?” my mother asked.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”

    â€œAre there people you talk to?”
    It seemed like a dumb question. I talked to everything—to stuffed animals and books, to my pillow and the trees. I walked across the fields talking.
    But my brother was eager to explain. “Not real people,” he said.
    â€œSpirit guides,” she interrupted. “Your brother and sister have one. How many do you have?”
    I looked out the window. Ten Speed had made a U-turn and was trying to pass us, her chin to the handlebars. I watched her a moment, giving my mother’s question some thought.
    â€œTwelve,” I said.
    Briefly, no one spoke.
    â€œWell then,” she told me, “you should have no problem finding your purpose. Just ask. I’m sure at least one of them will tell you.”
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    Novembers were disappointing. My father was gone, running his seafood stores or selling Christmas trees. My birthday passed while he worked, and that Friday, at school, the kids sang “Bonne Fête à Toi,” though I wouldn’t actually turn nine until Sunday. As they yammered, I mourned the few remaining weeks of salmon season and that my father was too busy to take me. The teacher told the class my age, and they all asked, as they did each November, why I was a year younger. I explained how my mother had thought kindergarten was a waste of time and made me go straight to first grade. They told me kindergarten was fun, and I said it was for slow learners, which she’d also said, though from what I’d heard, it did sound fun.
    The next morning, when my father was saying good-bye to my mother in the kitchen, I got up and grabbed my book on salmon and ran downstairs.
    â€œThe salmon runs are going to end,” I whined and showed him the dates. “Can’t we go for my birthday? It’s tomorrow. You were going to forget it. You always do.”
    He’d just finished putting on his rain gear by the door, and he sighed.
    â€œWe can’t go fishing,” he said after a moment, “but how about I take you to work for your birthday? There’s a spare bed. I’ll bring you back tomorrow.”
    I said, “Sure, okay,”