Stand Tall Read Online Free PDF Page B

brothers.
    Curtis and Larry were coming home on Friday, too.
    Curtis took time to do things with Tree. They’d play basketball together. And unlike his coaches, who always told Treewhat he was doing wrong, Curtis shouted out what he was doing right.
    “Good move on the hands.”
    “Good bounce on the ball.”
    “Good focus, you almost had that basket.”
    Larry was a pain. “Giant tree sloth,” that’s what he called Tree.
    Tree tried to take the insult apart, find the good.
Giant
he could live with, but
sloth
didn’t have an upside.
    He got out the can of deicer, sprayed the front steps, watched the ice evaporate. The ice had to be gone so Grandpa wouldn’t fall when he came home.
    He wondered if deicer would work on Larry.
    Then he remembered.
    Everyone was coming home, but he was supposed to stay at his mom’s next week.
    Curtis and Larry got to stay at Dad’s for their whole winter break. Mom was supposed to turn her attic into a bedroom for them, but she couldn’t yet. Money was tight.
    Tree threw the can down.
    He
had
to be there when Grandpa and his brothers came home.

C HAPTER S IX
    Tree’s mother . . .
    In workout clothes.
    At the kitchen counter.
    Typing on her laptop computer while studying fabric swatches for the couch.
    Looking up occasionally to make eye contact with Tree.
    Uttered the Big Question: “Honey, what would you like most to happen on Christmas Day?”
    What Tree wanted most was for it to be the way it had always been.
    He didn’t know how to say that.
    The Christmas Schedule: “Your dad and I have worked it out. You and your brothers are going to be there for Christmas Eve, and then early in the morning he’ll bring you all over here.”
    There and here.
    It sounded so easy when she said it.
    “I’m going to make apple, pecan, and pumpkin pies androast beef and get those dinner rolls you like. The tree will be up and it’s going to be okay, honey. It’s going to be fine.”
    Tree looked down.
    He wasn’t sure about
fine.
He knew it was going to be different.
    A blur of memories flooded Tree:
    Grandpa’s Christmas lights strung around his house in Baltimore—the house looked like Santa Claus himself lived inside.
    The blinking sign on the roof—MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!
    The crowds walking by.
    Bradley’s reindeer outfit that one year.
Bad
idea.
    The Christmas the stove broke and they had to eat at that all-you-can-eat buffet.
    The Christmas Larry threw up on their grandmother’s lace tablecloth and they finally figured out he was allergic to turkey.
    The Christmas Mom broke her leg and lay on the couch, shouting instructions for
where
each ornament was to be hung properly on the tree.
    Mom had stopped typing. “If I could, honey, I would fast-forward us all to a few years down the road when we’ll be more comfortable with this, even though I’d be older.” She laughed, looked at the fabric swatches on her lap. “Green, I think. Stripes get tired.”
    Tree didn’t understand how stripes could get tired.
    His mother used mysterious words when she decorated.
    “Curtis and Larry are coming home on Friday,” he said.
    She smiled. “I know.” She was clipping coupons now.
    “Grandpa’s coming home then, too.”
    She looked up. “So soon?”
    Big breath. “And, Mom, you know, I promised I’d help when Grandpa got home. He’s going to need a lot of help.”
    She knew that. She loved Leo, too.
    “It’s not that I don’t want to be here.” He looked down; didn’t like lying.
    “It’s just that you want to be
there
,” she said flatly.
    She wished she hadn’t said it that way.
    “I’ll come visit, Mom. I promise.”
    She threw down the coupons. “I don’t
ever
want you to feel like you’re just visiting me. I’m doing everything I can to make this house our home.”
    Tree looked at the freshly painted light green walls.
    The yellow curtains at the windows.
    The scented dried flowers that would make his father sneeze.
    Conan, the little gray terrier