The Book of One Hundred Truths Read Online Free PDF Page A

throat.
    “Can I have one of those?” I asked.
    “You can make your own later,” Austin said. “The important people have to go to work.” He rolled his own pancake into a funnel. But Liam jabbed him in the stomach when he filled the funnel with syrup, and a sticky fountain erupted from Austin’s mouth.
    Ellen pointed a spatula at him. “Stop acting like savages,” she said. She put three plates and three forks on the table, folded a napkin next to each, and said, “Sit.” Liam and Austin and I all sat. Liam turned his plate around in a circle.
    Celia looked at her watch. “You boys have exactly eleven minutes to eat and get dressed,” she said. “And Thea, if you wouldn’t mind, we’ve started some laundry you could finish while everyone’s gone. Edmund had an accident last night; we’re washing his sheets.”
    “Oh.” I picked up my fork. Did I want to hear about people wetting their beds while I ate my breakfast? I looked out the sliding door to the porch. Edmund was talking to himself and mixing up something with a wooden spoon in a yellow bucket. Jocelyn was reading a book of fairy tales. Her headband matched her shirt and her socks.
    “We decided that it would probably be a good idea,” Ellen said, “for us to leave you a list in the morning, of any little chores that might need to be done. Things that you could take care of. By the way, the clothespins are in a plastic bag on top of the dryer. When you hang up the sheets, make sure you clip the pillowcases along the edges, not in the middle. If you hang them in the middle, they get a crease.”
    “I’ll be sure to remember that.” I put some butter on my pancakes. Did they actually expect me to start my day with a list of chores?
    “Man, there’s something sticky on me,” Austin said. He stripped off his shirt, turned it inside out, and then put it back on.
    “Wait a second,” I said. “Why do I need to hang up the sheets if we have a dryer?”
    “We never dry sheets in the dryer,” Ellen said.
    “Why not?”
    “Because we hang them outdoors.” She picked up a purse so large she could probably carry a set of encyclopedias inside it. “I’m sure Jocelyn will be happy to help you. And you won’t have to worry about Edmund, because we’re dropping him off at Phoebe’s.”
    I looked down at my pancakes. “What do you mean, I won’t have to worry? Why would I worry about Edmund? Where’s Nenna?”
    “She’s taking Granda to a doctor’s appointment.” Celia shut the refrigerator door with her hip. “They’re leaving in half an hour.”
    Liam and Austin finished eating in about twelve seconds and went off to get dressed.
    “So this is a one-time kind of thing,” I said, measuring my words. “My watching Jocelyn, I mean. I’m going to babysit today because Granda has a checkup.”
    “That’s today’s schedule,” Celia said.
    “What about tomorrow’s?” I asked. “I don’t want to spend my vacation watching Jocelyn.”
    Ellen turned around. “Do you have any important plans in the next few days? Anything you won’t be able to reschedule?”
    “No, but—”
    “Your Nenna is seventy-four years old,” she said, leaning toward me. Her nostrils were as dark as caverns. “Do you want her to chase after a pair of kids while you eat potato chips and watch TV all day?”
    “Do we have potato chips?” I asked.
    We didn’t.
    Celia said she was sure it would all work out. She was sure I understood that a family vacation meant that every member of the family had to pitch in and help.

CHAPTER SIX

    Truth #9: I don’t think I would have come to Port Harbor if I’d known that so many people were going to be here.

    Truth #10: But I didn’t want to stay home, either. Sometimes I wish I had the courage to run away.

    “I’m okay by myself,” Jocelyn said after everyone else had left. “You don’t have to pay any attention to me. I know I’m supposed to leave you alone and not bother you.”
    I put my notebook in