Just as Long as We're Together Read Online Free PDF

kids do, too. I have mainly good dreams. My friend, Rachel, says I am an optimist. Even so, I don't want to die and neither do any of my friends. Why can't you arrange more meetings with other countries and try harder to get along. Make some treaties. Make them for one hundred years so we don't have to worry for a long time. You could also get rid of all the nuclear weapons in the world and then maybe Bruce, my brother, could get a decent night's sleep.
    Yours truly,
    Stephanie B. Hirsch
    I like using my middle initial for formal occasions. The B stands for Behrens. That's my mother's maiden name.
    I shoved my letter across the table, at Bruce. He read it. "This is about dreams," he said.
    "No, it's not," I told him. "It's about nuclear war."
    "But there's a lot in it about dreams."
    "So . . . what's wrong with that? If you didn't have bad dreams about nuclear war we wouldn't be writing to the President, would we?"
    "I don't know," Bruce said. "And you didn't make paragraphs, either."
    "I didn't make paragraphs on purpose," I said. That wasn't true but I wasn't going to admit it
    to Bruce. "I think it's an outstanding letter,"~ I said. "I think the part about the hundred year treaties is really brilliant."
    "In a hundred years we'll be dead," Bruce said, sounding gloomy.
    "So will everybody."
    "No. . . people who aren't born yet won't be."
    "That doesn't count," I said. "Everybody we know will be dead in a hundred years."
    "I don't like to think about being dead," Bruce said.
    "Who does?" I passed him the doughnut box. "Here," I said, "have one. . . it'll make you feel better."
    "I don't like these doughnuts," he said, "especially in the morning."
    8.
    Saturdays.
    Ever since Dad went to L.A. Mom takes Bruce and me to the office with her on Saturdays. She's got a travel agency in town. Going Places is the name of it. Aunt Denise says Mom is a real go-getter. She says she hopes I take after her. I don't know if I do or not. Mom had puppy fat like me when she was a girl. And we both have brown hair and blue eyes if that means anything.
    I reminded Mom this was the Saturday Rachel and I were going to shop with Alison, to help her fix up her room. "Rachel says it's very depressing the way it is. It's all gray."
    "Gray is a sophisticated color," Mom said.
    "But it's so blab . . . it doesn't suit Alison," I told her. "Alison is a very cheerful person."
          "She sounds like a good match for you," Mom
    said.
    "I think she is. I think we're really going to get along."
    "What about Rachel?" Mom asked.
    "She wants to be Alison's friend, too. She wants to help her get adjusted here. We're meeting in front of the bank at one o'clock. Is that okay?"
    "I think we can arrange to give you the afternoon off," Mom said. "But try and get as much as you can done this morning."
    "You know I'm a hard worker," I said.
    My job is filing. Craig taught me how to do it. He's one of Mom's part-time assistants. He wears a gold earring in one ear and has a scraggly moustache that he's always touching to make sure it's still there. He wants to write travel guides to places like Africa and India when he's out of college. So far he's only been as far away as Maine.
    There's no big deal to filing as long as you know the alphabet. The only thing I have to remember is that we file front to back here, which means I have to put the latest papers at the end of the folder, not at the beginning.
    While I was filing, who should come into Going Places but Jeremy Dragon, that good-looking boy from the bus. Only Rachel and Alison know my secret name for him. I named him that because
    of his chartreuse jacket with the dragon on the back. He wears it every day. He was with two of his friends. I recognized them from the bus, too.
    "Can I help you?" Craig asked them. "We need some brochures," Jeremy Dragon said, "for a school project."
    "Help yourself," Craig said.
    "How many can we take?" one of Jeremy's friends asked.
    I came running up front then. "How about five