Something Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

know I was still kicking. I sat down beside my mom and started eating again. Then my mom stood up.
    “I’m going to Bingo, hon,” she said. “I left a note for your dad. I’ll see you later, okay?”
    She picked up her purse and went out the back door. After she left, I just sat there. I was still hungry, but I didn’t feel like eating anymore. I guess I wanted my mom to sit with me while I ate supper — even if she stared out the window. It wasn’t fun eating hamburgers by myself. So I just sat there like my mom and stared out the window.

Chapter Seven
    As I stared out the window, I started to think. I remembered how my dad was nice to me and my mom sometimes. He wouldn’t yell or hit. We would go on a holiday and get along the whole time. For a while we would seem like different people, a normal happy family. In a way this was worse, because I never knew when he would start up again. I always had to be on guard to see when he started tochange. I had to be extra careful about what I said and did, so I didn’t set him off. I never sat near him, even when he seemed all right. The farther away I was, the more time it gave me to run in case I said the wrong thing.
    I heard my dad’s client say goodbye in the hall. It sounded like Mr. Grant, one of our neighbors, so I poked my head through the doorway. My dad looked at me and smiled.
    “Hello there, Froggy,” said Mr. Grant. “How’s school?”
    “Okay,” I said. “Everything’s good.”
    “Glad to hear that,” said Mr. Grant. “Well, thanks for everything, Tom. You’ve been a great help. I’ll have to think about this some more.” He shook my dad’s hand.
    Everyone looked up to my dad — he was good at his job and he was on a lot of committees. He even coached a boy’s hockey team. I went to most of the games because I loved watching my dad while he was coaching. He was always calling out to the kids on the ice, telling them how to play better. They allliked him. I tried to learn hockey, but I wasn’t very good.
    Mr. Grant left and my dad closed the door behind him. Then he just stood for a moment with his back to me. Right away I started backing into the kitchen. My dad was being too quiet. If things were okay, he would be humming or whistling and moving around. When he finally turned around, his face had changed. No more smiling. It looked like a dead man’s face.
    “Stuffing your face again?” he asked.
    I looked at my feet and tried to figure out how to get out of there without setting him off. “Just hamburgers,” I said.
    “Don’t like the food here?” my dad said softly. “Going to complain to your probation officer?”
    When he got mad, my dad’s eyes looked black. They had no color and seemed to go on forever.
    “I never complain to Ms. Lee,” I said. “I only tell her good things.”
    A big weight was coming down on me — fear and more fear, and the feeling that it was going to happen again. It was going to happen and I couldn’t stop it. No matter what Jujube and Ms. Lee and Mr. Taylor said, no one could stop this.
    But I tried once more to get my dad to think about happy things. “How was your meeting?” I asked.
    “Fine,” he snapped. “Until the goddam phone rang. I almost had that sucker landed, and then the phone threw us off. It would’ve been an easy ten thousand bucks. But now he has to think about it some more. I’ll bet it was your fault the phone rang, wasn’t it, Froggy? It was one of your goddam friends.”
    When I heard my dad say “goddam,” I turned into a black tornado inside, going round and round. Because when my dad swore, it was going to happen. There was no stopping it.
    He yelled, “You think you own this house! You spend all your time on the phone. Yourmother has to work part-time so we can feed you. You don’t even go to school half the time.”
    He looked huge and dark, like in nightmares. I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t talk. When I got scared like this, a hand came up from inside