Plain Proposal Read Online Free PDF

will be here soon enough.”
    Shelby sat up in the bed. “Do you mind if we leave that on for just a little while longer? Will it bother you, keep you from sleeping?”
    Miriam pulled back her hand. “No, I’ll just face toward the window. Just turn the knob to the left when you’re ready for sleep.”
    “Okay. Thanks. I like to write in my journal before I go to bed.” Shelby reached for the pen on the nightstand.
    “Do you do that every day?”
    “Most days.”
    Miriam noticed the tiny lock dangling from the side of the small book, and she wondered if Shelby locked it when she was done writing in it. Would Shelby ever share the contents with her like she assumed sisters would?
    “Good night, Shelby.”
    “Good night.”
    Miriam closed her eyes and said her nightly prayers. She wondered if Shelby prayed before sleep. Just in case she didn’t. . . Dear Lord, I sense sadness inside my cousin. Please wrap Your loving arms around her and guide her toward true peacefulness, the kind of peace and harmony that only comes from a true relationship with You. May her time here help to heal her heart . Aamen.

    Shelby stared at the page for a long while. Her cousin was snoring before Shelby wrote the first word. She sat thinking about her parents, images she wished she could erase from her mind. So much screaming. Especially when Shelby’s mother found out that her father had cheated on her. Shelby recalled that night with more detail than the other fights she’d seen her parents have. Her mother called her father names that she’d never heard spoken in her house. And from that moment, things went from bad to worse. And no one seemed to care how it was affecting her. It was as if the ground dropped from beneath her and she just kept falling, with no one to save her. She’d always relied on her father to protect her, to keep her safe—but he was the one who had pushed her into this dark place she couldn’t seem to escape. Her mother was too distraught to notice and focused much of her energy on how to get even with Shelby’s father. Then Tommy chose to break her heart in the midst of everything. “You’re sad all the time, Shelby,” he’d said. “I just can’t be around you like this anymore.”
    Shelby glanced around at her new accommodations for the next three months. She could run away, she supposed. But she didn’t have much money, so she wouldn’t get far. And she didn’t want to take up with the kind of people that she had in Texas, other lost souls like herself who eased their pain with alcohol and drugs. But what did she want?
    She put the pen to paper.
    Dear Diary,
    I’ve been shipped to Pennsylvania to live with my Amish cousins— people I don’t even know, who dress funny, don’t have electricity, and who get up at four thirty to start their day. They seem nice enough, but I don’t want to be here. The only family I have ever known sent me here against my will. If my parents love me, why don’t they want me with them? They only care about themselves. They have destroyed my life with their stupid decisions, and I’m the one who has to suffer along with them. If Tommy loved me, why did he break up with me? I know I’ve made some mistakes in my life, but I don’t think I deserve this.
    Or maybe I do. Maybe I’m being punished. I don’t know. I just know that I feel bad all the time. I want to be loved, but my heart is so empty, and my faith in life, in God, is gone. I don’t have anything to live for.

3
    M IRIAM GENTLY NUDGED THE HUDDLED MASS UNDER the covers. “Shelby, breakfast is ready.” It was already after five o’clock, but her cousin probably felt like she’d just gone to sleep.
    “Already?” Shelby pulled the covers over her head. “It’s not even daylight.”
    “It will be worth it when you see the feast Mamm and I have made for breakfast. Mamm always makes overnight blueberry French toast on Sunday, and we cook bacon and sausage.”
    Shelby poked her head from beneath