Not As We Know It Read Online Free PDF Page B

over the Falkland Islands, that British settlers had landed there in 1690 or that the Falklands had been under British rule for 150 years.
    Risk is a long game. Usually no one wins. Granddad says that’s like real war, another important lesson.
    I thought I had the upper hand when Ned and my parents got home. I had secured South and North America, and I had begun an invasion across Africa but had to stop when I couldn’t tell Granddad how many men had defended Rourke’s Drift against four thousand Zulu warriors. One hundred and fifty, he told me. We shared Europe and Asia. Granddad only had full control of Australia, the smallest of the continents.
    “Nice work,” Ned said, looking over my shoulder at the board.
    Ned was no good at Risk. He often said things like, “Why do I need to know that the official languages of Canada are English and French? I’m never gonna go there.” He never made defenses either. Granddad called him “Kamikaze Ned.”
    Kamikaze is a kind of suicide attack. During World War II, Japanese pilots would fly explosive laden planes into Allied ships. That’s where the word comes from.
    And that’s how Ned played. He risked everything. That was the name of the game, Risk, but it wasn’t a tactic that paid off.
    Risk was Ned’s tactic for life too—adventures far from home, adopting strange creatures, boldly going where I feared to go—and he seemed to enjoy it as much as he enjoyed sending his little plastic troops on a suicidal attack.
    Mum hadn’t come into the kitchen. She was crying in the hallway. Dad was pretending to make tea but I could tell he was listening to Mum too.
    “How was it?” I said to Dad.
    He shook his head, which either meant “not good” or “don’t ask” or a combination of both. Mum was still crying and Granddad was listening now.
    “Boys, can you go out for a minute? Anything you can do outside?” Dad said.
    Maybe risk wasn’t a tactic that paid off in life either. We’d brought risk home from the beach. We kept it locked up in our garage. Risk was worth it if it led to that miracle. But one thing was clear: a miracle had not arrived.
    The hospital appointments were never good. What Ned had, people don’t get better from. They take pills and medicines which sometimes make the symptoms, like his cough, better or sometimes don’t. But the people never get better. They only get worse.
    Before they stopped taking me along on appointments, I remember a doctor saying some people beat the odds. Some people with Ned’s condition live a long time. But the doctors didn’t think my brother was going to be one of them.
    Outside, I asked Ned, “How was it?”
    He pulled a face. “You know,” he said, shrugging at me like I’d shrugged at Tibs. Then he asked, “How’s Leonard?”
    My brother was cross that I hadn’t been to see
our little fishy friend.
    “He’ll be lonely,” Ned said. “And starving.”
    I didn’t tell Ned about my fear of Leonard. My brother didn’t understand fear. I just shrugged back; Leonard’s hunger held a small place in my mind compared to Ned’s hospital appointment.
    We couldn’t go back inside to the freezer yet.
    “Mussels?” I suggested.
    “Yes!” Ned said.
    I picked up my bike, while Ned bent over and coughed. “You stay here.” I promised to be back in twenty minutes with some mussels. They’re easy to find if you know where to look. I pedaled furiously and thought about Ned’s cough and Mum’s tears and the shake of Dad’s head.
    The first time they’d left me at home, instead of taking me along to the hospital, I’d muttered, “That’s so unfair.”
    Mum had gasped.
    Dad had got pretty angry, pretty quickly. “Jamie,” he’d said. “Don’t you ever talk about what’s fair and what’s not.”
    But I knew it was all unfair. It was unfair for all of us.
    I couldn’t ask anyone what they’d said at the hospital. It was unfair that I was the only one not to know. But I couldn’t say that