The Book of One Hundred Truths Read Online Free PDF

the zippered pocket of my suitcase and stuffed the entire thing under my bed. “Who told you not to bother me?”
    “You did.” She contemplated the objects on her dresser, then moved her jewelry box half an inch to the left. “Yesterday you told me I’m not supposed to follow you.”
    “Oh.” I stood up and stretched, then looked in the mirror above my own dresser. My face was too round, I thought. Worse, my chin had a cleft in it, like a misplaced dimple. I had tried to flatten it out with masking tape once, but it hadn’t worked.
    “You’re different this summer than you were last year,” Jocelyn said.
    “Am I?” I headed downstairs. “How am I different?”
    “Your hair was longer last summer,” Jocelyn said. She was following me again. “You let me braid it.”
    I remembered sitting on the living room floor watching some kind of movie while Jocelyn’s fingers twined through my hair.
    “And you were nicer,” she added. “This summer you aren’t as nice yet.”
    I turned around at the bottom of the steps. “Do you think I’ll get nicer?”
    Jocelyn scratched herself. “I have eczema on this arm now, too.” She held her pale forearm up to the light, and I saw the peeling skin on her wrist and her hand, which was pink and rough.
    I looked out the sliding door to the porch. The sun was hammering a silver path across the water. “I guess I’m supposed to do laundry now,” I said. “If you want, you can help. But we have to do it Ellen’s way, which means we’re probably going to need a compass or a calculator.” I opened the folding doors in front of the washing machine and dryer. Deep in the washer, Edmund’s sheets were tangled up with socks and pajamas and a tablecloth and Granda’s handkerchiefs. Old people used handkerchiefs, I had noticed. Why didn’t they use tissues, like other people? I tugged at the heavy, soggy bundle. It was like trying to pull an octopus out of a hole.
    “I saw you writing in your diary,” Jocelyn said.
    “It isn’t a diary; I already told you.” I dumped the laundry, including the balled-up sheets and a tiny pair of pajamas printed with elephants, into a plastic basket.
    “Then what is it?” Jocelyn handed me a bag of clothespins. “Will you tell me what you wrote in it?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I just won’t. It’s private. How often does Edmund wet his bed?”
    “Not very often.” She helped me carry the basket past the dryer (which looked almost new) and down the outdoor stairs. “I think at home it only happens a few times a week.”
    We set the basket down on the walk. The wind was blowing, and when I pulled the first sheet from the top of the pile, it flapped and clung to me, the cold cloth sticking to my legs.
    “You haven’t gone swimming yet.” Jocelyn couldn’t reach the clothesline, so she sat on one of the three wooden steps that led over the bulkhead to the beach. “You didn’t go in the water yesterday or the day before. And you haven’t gone in it today, either.”
    “Maybe I don’t like swimming.” I peeled the wet sheet off my legs and draped it over the line. By the time I pinned it into place, one long white edge was covered with sand. “Or maybe I went swimming before breakfast. Maybe I snuck out of the house and you didn’t notice.”
    “There’s no wet bathing suit on the clothesline,” Jocelyn said. “And I would have noticed. Because I’ve been watching you.”
    “Why are you watching me?”
    “Why aren’t you going in the water?”
    I pinned Edmund’s pajamas and Granda’s handkerchiefs to the clothesline. “I’m not going in the water because there are jellyfish,” I said. The lie came to me easily, like a bubble rising up in a glass. “I’m allergic to jellyfish.”
    “Everyone’s allergic,” Jocelyn said. “Just like with bees.”
    “But I’m allergic in a different way,” I said. “If I just put my toe in the water and there are jellyfish anywhere around, even ten feet