Jake Read Online Free PDF

there’s a drawer on each side for the pieces. We can leave it set up in there and it doesn’t get messed up.”
    She was already on her way to the hall closet. I figured she was getting a jigsaw, because Mrs. Buttermark loves jigsaws. I don’t exactly love them, but I don’tmind sitting over them and sorting through the pieces when I’m with her.
    She banged around in there for a minute and came up with a chess game. It was the kind with a fold-up board and plastic pieces, but who cares? It was a chess game.
    One piece was missing, a bishop. Mrs. Buttermark got a tiny salt shaker to replace that piece and we were in business.

CHAPTER FOUR
    I slept on
Mrs. Buttermark’s couch that night. I felt good when she turned out the lights. The couch was comfortable, even if my tailbone was sore.
    Mrs. Buttermark told me that’s what I hit when I fell. She did it herself one time. It could be sore for longer than Mom’s leg was broken, but it would get better after a while. I fell asleep thinking it was funny that people had a tailbone.
    Then I dreamed my mom got lost in the museum.
    Also, she got off the subway train without me and I got lost. Then she fell into her cup of tea and drowned because I couldn’t swim out to get her.
    This was stupid because we don’t have subway trains in Baltimore and no one drowns in a cup of tea.
    I
got lost in the museum once but I didn’t evenknow it. I had too many things to look at to wonder where Mom was. I was lost and I was found before I knew anybody was upset.
    Anyway, I kept waking up all night long in a sweat to throw the blanket off. Then I’d wake up cold and huddle up under it again. The clock read 5:55 when I woke up the last time and used the bathroom.
    Mrs. Buttermark got up a few minutes after I went back to the couch. I heard the shower running for a long time. I didn’t see her again for an hour.
    I have this idea the only way to live with a female is to be up ten minutes before she is so you can use the bathroom. Or don’t even bother to get out of bed until an hour after she goes into the bathroom and shuts the door. It’s true with Mom. It’s true at Aunt Ginny’s and Suzie’s too.
    You don’t get anywhere till sometime past noon unless you absolutely have to be at school or karate class or a doctor’s appointment. I don’t know why.
    I turned on a lamp and got one of the books off Mrs. Buttermark’s shelf and started to read. It started off great, with a dead body on the second page, and this lady detective who decides to solve the murder.
    *   *   *
    We got to the hospital around eleven. For somebody who gets up way before the sun comes up, eleven is noon. I still felt like we made good time.
    They had moved Mom to a different floor. After a few minutes of confusion, we found her room. She was sleeping, although her face didn’t look so much like a mask.
    There was a man standing on each side of her bed.
    I could tell one of them was a doctor. White jacket, with a clipboard. He looked like a guy I saw on the basketball court in the park in summer. I hoped it wasn’t really him, though, because that guy was in high school.
    The other guy was dressed for a fishing trip, it looked like to me. He had an old face but his shoulders looked big, like he worked out. His white hair had been cut so short I could see pink skin underneath.
    He looked strange. But there was a whiff of something in the room that made me want to take a deep breath.
    The doctor asked us, “Are you family?”
    “I’m Liz’s neighbor,” Mrs. Buttermark said to them as if she was the school principal. “This is Jake, her son. Who might you be?”
    The doctor was quicker to answer, but he looked less interested than the other guy. The doctor said some things about how the swelling had gone down, so they could operate. Mom didn’t have much pain, which sounded good to me.
    The other guy turned out to be my granddad.
    “Colonel Wexler,” he said, and shook Mrs. Buttermark’s