How I Live Now Read Online Free PDF Page A

and all, like it was preying on my mind that she might be feeling uncomfortable when in fact I just hoped her ankles would swell up like balloons and her breasts would sag down to her knees and the silicone in them turn to cement. There was a little something stuck on at the end of the letter about missing me, and how I should be careful not to become a Victim of the Terrorist Threat and had I managed to gain any weight blah blah blah.
    Leah's letter was much more entertaining, with reports that Ms. Cool Herself, Melissa Banner, was going around telling everyone that she and Lyle Hershberg were Hooking Up. Well if this banner headline is true, I swear to god I will assign all my worldly goods to the Salvation Army and I'd say there's no danger of some religious tuba player ending up with my DVD player given that Lyle was famous for telling his last girlfriend Mimi Maloney that if she didn't Satisfy His Needs at least three times a day he'd have to find relief elsewhere and Melissa Banner is the world's most famous living professional virgin. Leah walked in once on Lyle Satisfying His Needs all by himself in homeroom when everyone should have been at school assembly and she said Well well well Lyle Hershberg, don't look now but there's a Smurf with a hard-on in your pants. Or at least she claims that's what she said but not to be disloyal or anything I've always had my doubts.
    I wanted to talk all this through with Leah right then and there and I nearly cried with how much I missed having a cell phone that worked and e-mail even if I did have a hundred and twelve wacky cousins instead.
    So I sat down and wrote back all about Edmond and Piper and Isaac and the animals and the house and the war, and I made it sound even better than it actually was, and by the time I finished the letter I'd convinced myself that This Was the Life oh yes and Boy Had I Lucked Out. But it's easier said than done to convince yourself that god has smiled on you when the actual fact is that you're living with strangers due to the evil workings of your wicked stepmother not to mention your official next of kin.
    Then in came Osbert again with a face like a dead pigeon and said there were more attacks this time in the U.S.A.
    And when, to seem interested, I said How terrible, where? He said Pittsburgh and Detroit and Houston only he pronounced it Hoos-ton. Well part of me was happy they hadn't bombed the Upper West Side and part of me started having this pretty good fantasy about Dad and Davina all bandaged up and limping and trying to come live here with us and us saying We are just SO SORRY but the airports are shut otherwise we'd simply LOVE to have you, really we would.
    I tried eating a little bit of bacon today because Edmond particularly asked me to but it tasted like pig and I gagged.

8
    I 'm thinking now would be a good time to talk about Isaac because he's the one who gets left out of most of the action due to hardly ever saying a word but I'm starting to realize it's the ones who aren't yakking all the time who sometimes turn out to be worth keeping an eye on.
    At first I barely noticed him what with noticing Edmond so much and Piper holding my hand all the time and chickens clucking, dogs barking, sheep baaing, not to mention half the world blowing up and the pipes banging night and day. So it took me longer than usual to get the picture that while Piper and Edmond were busy watching over me, Isaac was busy watching over them.
    He didn't do it in an obvious way like Osbert who was always pushing himself into the conversation with superior information and making it clear that he was the one with Family Responsibilities which Frankly Exhausted Him and He'd Rather Not Be Bothered only Seeing As How He Was the Eldest, Well, deep sigh.
    Edmond on the other hand was totally up-front even if he did surprise you in about half a million ways each day. When Edmond was listening in to your thoughts, you could tell by looking at him looking at