The Book of Jonas Read Online Free PDF Page A

room for hours on end. Once in a while he says something to Jonas, asks him a question about video games or sports, but these questions are posed in passing. Ad-son seems to remain uninvested in Jonas, unemotional, as though by speaking with him, he is utilizing the scientific method to query a science experiment.
    Cutie is a mystery because Jonas does not see her enough. She is two years older, and heavily involved in school activities, cheerleading and gymnastics and something called pep club. Jonas is shocked to find that the Martins allow her to visit with her boyfriend in the living room entirely unsupervised. He is alternately attracted to her and repelled by her, forcing himself not to dwell upon her bare legs or the occasional swear word that escapes her lips when she thinks her parents aren’t listening. For a time, he is vaguely concerned about living with a family that allows their only daughter to be alone with a man who is not a blood relative, particularly while wearing such provocative clothing.
    Cutie, in turn, seems to regard Jonas with an affectionate, condescending interest, as though he is a puppy that haswandered into her garden. After breakfast one morning, she kisses her mother on the cheek, punches Ad-son in the arm, and then pats Jonas on the head before gliding through the house and out the front door to her boyfriend’s waiting car, carried on a cloud of perfume and a toss of blond hair.
    Once, when everyone has left the house, he stands in turn at each of the doorways to their bedrooms and tries to place them into context. He does not enter the rooms, in part out of fear of being caught, and in part out of fear of what he might find.
    Cutie’s room is pink and white, the corners piled with dirty clothes and the shelves punctuated with a smattering of toys left over from a time when she was a younger girl: stuffed animals, a doll or a glittery pinwheel or knickknacks held firm like memories.
    Ad-son’s room is tidier, but is still filled with stuff, with superheroes and army men, a computer screen on a desk in front of the window, at which he sits for hours a day in front of video games and other mysteries. The walls of both rooms are covered with posters—singers and actors in Cutie’s room, and in Ad-son’s, football and hockey players and, on the wall next to his desk, a tiny picture of a girl in a bathing suit.
    By contrast, Jonas’s room is austere, bare-walled, with a simple pine table and chair, both of them labeled with stickers underneath that say, “IKEA,” and a small closet, which is empty except for Jonas’s several hanging shirts.
    “You can change things around however you like,” Mrs. Martin had said when she first showed him the room. “We can take you to get some things.”
    It was said almost in passing, in the midst of the activitysurrounding his arrival, but then the weeks had rolled by, and the promise to “get some things” for the room had been forgotten. Jonas doesn’t mind, though. For one thing, he likes the room’s clean spareness, and feels that within its space his existence is boiled down to its most basic essence, devoid of the complications of ownership and maintenance.
    But the main reason he does not decorate his room is that he feels it would make him too familiar.
    Like their rooms, the Martin children announce their identities to the world, inform everyone who cares to know about their every want, dream, proclivity, interest, hobby, or passion. Within a few months, Jonas feels that he knows basically everything there is to know about their lives. For example, he knows that Cutie, although superficially warm and friendly, values her popularity and standing at school above almost anything else, that her greatest fear is losing her status. He knows that Ad-son, while trying to appear cool and aloof and smart, is concerned about where he fits in, about the prospect of living forever in his sister’s shadow.
    But Jonas lives in a clean white room