Who I'm Not Read Online Free PDF

didn’t even do it with each other much. Mostly it was just business.
    That was what they’d gotten me for: Business. At first I was just cover for them—everybody trusts a family more. I was small for my age and I looked younger than I was, especially after they got me some new clothes and a haircut. “Stand beside me and smile. Then give them an envelope. Say ‘Blessings to you.’”
    â€œBlessings to you.”
    â€œYou’re a natural. You like school?” Harley worked his gum.
    I shrugged. I hated school.
    â€œWell, we move around a lot. This is a different school. School of life. Right now we’re going to work this mall. Smile and hold Darla’s hand when we walk.”
    That was the only part I didn’t like, but I managed.
    Harley pulled the door open. “Everything you need to know, you’re going to learn from us. Keep your ears and eyes open.”

EIGHT
    You’d better believe my eyes and ears were open now. I didn’t know squat about Canada or the town of Port Hope, except that Shan and Roy and the kids lived in a semi (whatever that was) at 26 Yardley Street. A semi turned out to mean “semidetached”: the place was joined up to a twin house on one side. It was the kind of neighborhood Harley might have run his vinyl-siding-refresher scam in, or sent me through selling phony magazine subscriptions to “raise money for my school.” I wasn’t expected to know anything, though, because they’d moved from their old town. The one I “disappeared” from. When Shan asked, I said I didn’t want to go back or see anyone from there, because it brought back bad memories.
    Everything seemed completely straight up. In some ways, it was a pretty standard game. I came up with memories for Uncle Pete that I got from Gram and memories for Grampy that I got from Uncle Pete. I toed out. I used the word sucker a lot. I scooted back and forth on my butt beside Matt and Brooklynne when we watched TV. (It was tiring; maybe Danny had ADHD.) I must have been a pretty good Danny Dellomondo, because they bought it. You could tell by the way Gram and Grampy hugged me before they headed back to their place in Havelock, about an hour’s drive north. Shan told me I had a case worker assigned from Children’s Aid to help “facilitate my transitioning.” She was going to come by in a couple of days, but right now I could just chill.
    It was easy for her to say. For the first time in three years I’d stopped moving, but my brain was still going flat-out, bouncing around as if I were trapped on a bumper car ride. It was hard to take a breath, especially in a little house with four strangers who were supposed to be my family. We were watching each other all the time and pretending we weren’t. When Shan said Matt wanted to show me around town, I didn’t know if he did or not, but I let him. It was a chance to stretch, scope an exit and pump a little more info.
    At first, I’d thought Port Hope was like a lot of towns in the northeastern States. Then I’d started noticing differences, like everything was in kilometers and liters, not miles and gallons. That took me awhile to figure out. And there were one- and two-dollar coins instead of bills. Also, there was foreign printing on packages, in what turned out to be French. I didn’t get why, because nobody in the town spoke it as far as I could tell, but of course I couldn’t ask. I was just worried that I’d be expected to know. One day, looking at a cereal box, I’d said, “I forgot about this being on everything. I can’t even read it.”
    â€œWell, join the club,” Shan said. “We’re thinking about French immersion for Brooklynne, but I don’t know.” That hadn’t helped. After I’d found the library, I read newspapers until I learned about Quebec, this place in Canada that was all French.
    I found the