Takeoffs and Landings Read Online Free PDF Page A

or what people called black, but his skin was a different shade entirely. When he talked, Chuck couldn’t understand him at all.
    He bet Lori could, though.
    â€œIt’s the one on the left,” the man, John, was saying. “You can pull in at the circular drive.”
    The taxi driver said something, and Chuck couldn’t make sense of a single syllable. But somehow, he knew the taxi driver was complaining. Don’t treat me like anidiot. Don’t you think I know what I’m doing? Who gave you the right to boss me around? Chuck was suddenly filled
with deep respect for the taxi driver. If only Chuck could stand up for himself like that. He wished he could repeat the words the taxi driver had said. It’d be nice to toss out some foreign phrase the next time the kids picked on him at school or Pop yelled at him for forgetting to lock the barn.
    They stopped and the taxi driver began pulling their luggage out of the trunk. Chuck went over and picked up his own suitcase—still looking as new and unused as the picture in the Penney’s catalog Gram had ordered it from. Then he reached for Mom’s, which was a little more battered. Seasoned. Mom turned around and saw what he was doing.
    â€œOh, Chuck, you don’t have to worry about those. Leave them for the bellhop.”
    â€œHuh?” Chuck said.
    â€œSomeone from the hotel will carry our bags for us,” Mom explained.
    Face flushed with embarrassment, Chuck dropped the bags. Both John and the taxi driver were looking at him. Chuck retreated to the curb, wishing the sidewalk would swallow him up. He could live in the sewers of Chicago for the rest of his life, if only he didn’t have to see the look of scorn on Lori’s face.
    It wasn’t fair. If Pop had been along and Chuck had stood aside like Mom said he should, Pop would haveyelled at Chuck for being lazy. That was one of Pop’s favorite complaints about Chuck; how many times had Chuck heard, “You’re not carrying your own weight!” hollered at him across a barn or a hay wagon or a cornfield? The words always seemed doubly cutting, considering that Chuck’s weight would be a lot for anyone to carry.
    Chuck watched the taxi driver take their suitcases to a man in a uniform, who stacked them on a rolling rack and pushed them through the automatic doors.
    It was nice not having to carry his own suitcase. But he could hear Pop’s voice growling in his head. Why should someone else carry your suitcase for you, when you’re able-bodied and perfectly capable of doing it yourself?
    Was it Pop’s voice or what Chuck thought himself?

Lori leaned toward the huge wall of mirror to apply lip liner. She had to admit, it was a lot easier to see to put on makeup here in the hotel than back home, looking at Pop and Gram’s cracked bathroom mirror. The crack went right through the middle of her face, so she either had to stand on Emma’s old bathroom stool to see her face whole or duck and weave to look around the crack.
    Mike and Joey had broken the mirror a month ago, throwing a football inside the house. Gram and Pop hadn’t fixed it yet, as a reminder to them all not to play so rough indoors. Lori didn’t think that was fair. She hadn’t broken the mirror. And it didn’t punish Mike and Joey at all, because they didn’t even look in the mirror to wipe their faces. Lori thought Gram and Pop were just being lazy. They didn’t care about the bathroom mirror because their bathroom, the only one their company ever saw, was downstairs, newly remodeled.
    Mostly, Lori got along with Gram and Pop, so it was weird that she was resenting them now. Usually, she reserved all her ill feelings for Mom. Okay, here it was: Lori thought Mom was the one who’d paid for Gram and Pop’s remodeled bathroom. Once again, everything could be traced back to Mom.
    Lori stuck her tongue out at the gleaming hotel mirror. Take that,