The Apple Tart of Hope Read Online Free PDF Page A

us sitting there, crouched and furtive, with our chins on our elbows talking for hours about the important stuff that little kids have to talk about, like whether it was going to snow, or what we were getting for Christmas, or when was the next time we were going to the zoo.
    In the beginning, our parents had told us we weren’t allowed to hang out of our windows on account of them thinking that hanging out of windows was extremely dangerous. Often they shouted for us to get back inside and say good night and go to bed. But after a while, they gave up worrying about it. It became the thing we always did. We never fell out. They bought us phones when we were eleven, saying “now you can talk to each other whenever you want.” They thought we’d be thrilled, but we weren’t. We were horrified. We didn’t need phones as long as we lived next door to each other. Oscar kept the same old branch from that cherry tree in his room, refusing to let anyone take it away, and every night, I’d wait for his scratchy whack on my window. It was the best sound ever.
    Another thing about Oscar is that he wasn’t afraid of anyone. And he always made up his own mind, no matter what other people said. They’re two of the best things I remember about him now.
    He wasn’t just my friend. He was kind of magic. I can’t really explain it better than that. He was honest and he was decent and he was always cheerful. And even though his brother, Stevie, had to use a wheelchair, it wasn’t a problem the way people usually think it is, because Oscar always made sure that every door was opened and every stairway had a ramp, and every train station had the right access so he could get in. He used to say that if the world was designed properly, the whole population would be flying around the place in wheelchairs. And when he said that, Stevie used to laugh.
    Oscar’s hobby was saving people. He used to save people all the time, and fix things that were broken and catch people when they were falling. It wasn’t a skill that you’d immediately know about or notice. Stevie said that Oscar had a gift and the gift was that he could
smell
things that you wouldn’t imagine would smell of anything—things like sadness and desperation. Things like fear and hopelessness.
    He never made a big deal about it, but he was quiet and confident—and when you believe in your own abilities, you are much more likely to be always ready to act on them, which Oscar always was. Whenever I asked him about it, he claimed that his were not exceptional or extraordinary abilities in the slightest. Everyone, he said, is able to tell when someone is in need of help, but few people really take the time to listen to their instincts, and that, he said, was the only difference between him and a lot of other people.
    It wasn’t the only thing about him that was different. Oscar used to make apple tarts. I never thought there was anything remarkable about them until one night, a while before I left.
    I think of it still, even when I’m trying not to.

the fourth slice

    When you live on the coast, you get used to the thousand sounds of the sea—booming one day so that you have to cover your ears, another day smacking on the rocks like the sound of giants clapping. Sometimes crashing, sometimes rippling, other times pattering. The coast is a moody place. Each day is different. Nothing ever stays the same.
    It had been a summery midnight in June. The air was warm and muffled, and the sea was quiet, but little chilly strands sneaked up from its surface, weaving in and out of the warmth as they often did around our place, even in the hottest weather.
    The moon wobbled with a silver brightness so it looked as if it might be breathing, and Meg Molony sat, extremely spectacular in her window—her lovely face sprinkled with freckles, her hands picking pieces of plaster off the wall, her face peering out into the