Read Online Ask Him Why by Catherine Ryan Hyde - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Catherine Ryan Hyde
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watching. Assuming they catch him. And if they don’t, that’s an ongoing story, too. This could go on for months. Years. This is our new normal, and everybody’s just going to have to learn to deal with it.”
Absolute silence. I was trying to imagine what it would feel like to live this way for months. Or years. I figured everybody else was, too.
“No, we can’t shield them from this anymore,” he said. “They’re just going to have to find their own way through.”
As was usually the case in our family, no one bothered to offer us a pat on the back, a cheerful thought, a boxed lunch, or an instruction manual. We were just thrown out into the harshest corners of the world to figure things out for ourselves.
The following morning, I raided my piggy bank. This is not as childish an act as it may sound. I didn’t have pennies and quarters in there. I had hundred-dollar bills. Thirteen of them.
Every year on my birthday, ever since I was one, my Aunt Clara had given me a hundred-dollar bill. The first one had come with—in—the piggy bank. Or so I’d been told. Because I was always swimming in presents anyway, I was taught to tuck the bills away in the piggy. Save for the future.
It wasn’t one of those banks with the rubber plug in the bottom. It was a deposit-only model. If you wanted what was in there, you had to smash it.
I smashed it. With my math textbook.
I had a savings account at the bank, too. Which didn’t require the smashing of anything. It did, however, require a second signature from one of my parents. So that was out.
I quietly wrapped the pieces in some old newspaper—a sports section I’d rescued from my dad’s smoking room. I snuck them downstairs. Out the kitchen door. I saw no one on the way to the outdoor trash shed.
Until I got there.
Then I was startled to see a total stranger going through our recycling.
He wasn’t a homeless guy. Not down on his luck or anything like that. He was wearing a camel-hair coat that probably cost a grand or more. Wing-tip shoes.
He ran like a thief when he saw me coming.
I stood staring after him for a moment. Then I wedged the piggy-bank shards deep in the trash.
When I got back upstairs, I stuffed the money in my jeans pocket. Already feeling vulnerable. Like muggers and thieves would just sense all that money. Smash me with their own math textbooks the minute I stepped out the door.
I did a little research online. Wrote down an address and phone number. Then I marched out the front door as though headed for school.
My mom walked ahead of us. Ruth and me. Walked us through the crowd. I swear it was a genuine crowd by then. Probably forty people or more. News vans—three or four. Spectators who may have had nothing to do with the media. Women anchors or correspondents talking into microphones, right into the cameras, with our house as the background.
My mom didn’t say one word to them. She just accomplished it all with a look. Plus, in retrospect, I’m thinking the incident where she threatened to run them over with her car might have passed from ear to ear.
They parted like the Red Sea for Moses, and we walked through. In relative silence. Just one news lady in a bright-red pantsuit kept talking.
Nobody had the nerve to follow us to the bus stop.
I was going to wait for the bus with Ruth. Get off at school. Walk away from there and move on.
But I got impatient.
“I’m not going to school,” I told her.
“Oh,” she said. Then, a bit later, “Where are you going?”
“Can I not tell you?”
“Sure,” she said. “Whatever.”
“Thanks.”
My idea had been to take the bus to this Marshall Kendrick’s office. But I started getting uneasy with that plan. Like I’d get lost. Like it would be too confusing. Too much. I think I could have bitten it off easily enough on most other days. Since losing Joseph again, everything felt overwhelming.
I asked Ruth if I could borrow her phone.
“What happened to
Absolute silence. I was trying to imagine what it would feel like to live this way for months. Or years. I figured everybody else was, too.
“No, we can’t shield them from this anymore,” he said. “They’re just going to have to find their own way through.”
As was usually the case in our family, no one bothered to offer us a pat on the back, a cheerful thought, a boxed lunch, or an instruction manual. We were just thrown out into the harshest corners of the world to figure things out for ourselves.
The following morning, I raided my piggy bank. This is not as childish an act as it may sound. I didn’t have pennies and quarters in there. I had hundred-dollar bills. Thirteen of them.
Every year on my birthday, ever since I was one, my Aunt Clara had given me a hundred-dollar bill. The first one had come with—in—the piggy bank. Or so I’d been told. Because I was always swimming in presents anyway, I was taught to tuck the bills away in the piggy. Save for the future.
It wasn’t one of those banks with the rubber plug in the bottom. It was a deposit-only model. If you wanted what was in there, you had to smash it.
I smashed it. With my math textbook.
I had a savings account at the bank, too. Which didn’t require the smashing of anything. It did, however, require a second signature from one of my parents. So that was out.
I quietly wrapped the pieces in some old newspaper—a sports section I’d rescued from my dad’s smoking room. I snuck them downstairs. Out the kitchen door. I saw no one on the way to the outdoor trash shed.
Until I got there.
Then I was startled to see a total stranger going through our recycling.
He wasn’t a homeless guy. Not down on his luck or anything like that. He was wearing a camel-hair coat that probably cost a grand or more. Wing-tip shoes.
He ran like a thief when he saw me coming.
I stood staring after him for a moment. Then I wedged the piggy-bank shards deep in the trash.
When I got back upstairs, I stuffed the money in my jeans pocket. Already feeling vulnerable. Like muggers and thieves would just sense all that money. Smash me with their own math textbooks the minute I stepped out the door.
I did a little research online. Wrote down an address and phone number. Then I marched out the front door as though headed for school.
My mom walked ahead of us. Ruth and me. Walked us through the crowd. I swear it was a genuine crowd by then. Probably forty people or more. News vans—three or four. Spectators who may have had nothing to do with the media. Women anchors or correspondents talking into microphones, right into the cameras, with our house as the background.
My mom didn’t say one word to them. She just accomplished it all with a look. Plus, in retrospect, I’m thinking the incident where she threatened to run them over with her car might have passed from ear to ear.
They parted like the Red Sea for Moses, and we walked through. In relative silence. Just one news lady in a bright-red pantsuit kept talking.
Nobody had the nerve to follow us to the bus stop.
I was going to wait for the bus with Ruth. Get off at school. Walk away from there and move on.
But I got impatient.
“I’m not going to school,” I told her.
“Oh,” she said. Then, a bit later, “Where are you going?”
“Can I not tell you?”
“Sure,” she said. “Whatever.”
“Thanks.”
My idea had been to take the bus to this Marshall Kendrick’s office. But I started getting uneasy with that plan. Like I’d get lost. Like it would be too confusing. Too much. I think I could have bitten it off easily enough on most other days. Since losing Joseph again, everything felt overwhelming.
I asked Ruth if I could borrow her phone.
“What happened to
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