Where I Belong Read Online Free PDF Page A

long. Where are these people driving? And who names a truck? The only thing we call automobiles in the city is “taxi.”
    “You know, Corrinne, your mother named Billie Jeanthe First when she was about your age. It took her forever to think of a name. And then one day: poof, she was inspired.” In the front seat, Grandma closes her fist and opens it slowly as she says “poof” and smirks to herself.
    “Now, you kids must be tired, why don’t you try to get some sleep during the drive?” Grandpa says before starting the engine and weaving into the traffic.
    Thank God. I was wondering how I could make small talk for four hours. Closing my eyes, I pinch myself to make sure this is happening and fall asleep to Grandpa chirping, “And when you wake up, we’ll be in your new home, Broken Spoke!”
     
    Tripp snoring like Shrek jerks me out of my sleep. The kid seriously needs to get his adenoids taken out, or he’ll never get a wife. I open only one eye since I am not up for a chat. It’s gotten completely dark, and we’re traveling down a deserted highway. I think I see a cow, but it’s hard to tell since we’re doing eighty in a rattling truck, and I am using only one eye. Over Tripp’s snoring, I hear Grandma whisper “Jenny Jo” and my ears perk up. Jenny Jo was my mother’s name before she escaped from Texas and took on the moniker J.J. I know this only from looking at her driver’s license. This is a genius time to eavesdrop since my mom never talks about her time in Broken Spoke, her pre-Manhattan life. Maybe I’ll evenhear some juicy long-lost secret and be able to blackmail my mom into sending me to Kent. Luckily, I have great hearing and my grandparents aren’t exactly experts at using library voices.
    “You can’t still be mad, Sandy. It was twenty years ago,” Grandpa says.
    “And after fifty-two years of marriage, you can’t still be stupid enough to tell me how to feel,” Grandma whispers back.
    Fifty-two years? Whoa! That’s a long marriage. Every married couple I know put together hasn’t been married that long. My parents have been married twenty years and that’s, like, way weird in Manhattan. But what happened twenty years ago? That’s the year my parents got married.
    “It’s not just what happened twenty years ago. It’s what happened during the twenty years after that. Sending checks in the mail, never coming to visit, and now this? She ships off her kids and stays back in the big city herself. I swear, if it weren’t for the thirteen hours in labor, I wouldn’t think she was mine,” Grandma hisses.
    “Hush, Sandy, the grandchildren are in the car. You’ll wake them. See this time as an opportunity,” Grandpa says. I see him wrap his arm around her. Grandma scoots toward him on the bench and rests her head on his shoulder.
    “It’s just I don’t know what to say to people. I didn’tknow how to talk about her staying away, and I don’t know how to talk about her returning, especially not under these circumstances,” Grandma says. “It’s not as if she actually wants to come home again, it’s just that she has no other choice.”
    “Don’t worry about what people say. It ain’t anyone’s business,” Grandpa responds, and squeezes Grandma close. “And it might even be fun to have a full house.”
    Hold on. This is big. Something happened twenty years ago, the year that my parents got married. And Grandma, despite all her jam gifting, is apparently still fuming.
    And if I heard right, she doesn’t want us here any more than I want to be here. If I play this all right, it doesn’t look like I’ll have to stay long in Texas after all.
     
    “Wake up, Corrinne, wake up.” Tripp shakes me.
    As I open both eyes, I realize this is no dream. I click my wedges three times, and think, “There’s no place like New York.” Sadly, it doesn’t work and I am still sitting next to Tripp in Billie Jean the Second.
    “Welcome to Broken Spoke, Tripp and Corrinne,”