Read Online The Breadwinner Trilogy (Book 1): The Breadwinner by Stevie Kopas - Free Book Online Page B

fever and beat each other up and the rest of us have to suffer?”
    “V, it’s a little more complicated I’m afraid.”  He walked over and placed a large hand on his daughter’s soft dark hair.  “It seems like things are getting a little scary out there and it’s time you two kids and I had a discussion about it.”  Veronica thought back to the night before and remembered the screaming in the streets.
    Isaac got up and walked over to the sliding door of their apartment that led to the balcony.  He pulled back one of the blinds and stared.  “I watched enough of the news with you dad, and I know that this is just like any of those hurricane warnings they send our way.”  He dropped the blind and turned toward his father.  “It’s a bunch of media hyped mumbo jumbo that they’re cryin’ wolf about so that they can scare people into spendin’ a chunk of money they don’t have in order to stimulate the economy.”  He stuck his hands in his pockets and rolled his eyes, looking at his sister.  “Or some shit.”
    “There you go,” Veronica smiled at her brother, closing her laptop.  “Gettin’ all smart on us.”  She giggled to herself and Isaac gave her the finger.
    James, displeased with his children’s vulgarity toward one another pulled the remaining dining room chair out and sat down in it, slamming his big fist down on the table.  Not in anger, but as a warning.  “You two need to quit it now.”  His deep voice filled the apartment in only the way a father’s concerned voice could.  “You know I don’t like you usin’ that language around your sister, and I think you need to go ahead and sit back down with me to have a discussion.”
    “Yes sir,” Isaac mumbled as he returned to his seat at the small wooden table.  The siblings, only two years apart, Veronica 16 and Isaac 18, looked as though they could be twins, and neither of them looked as if they belonged to their father.  James was a shorter build, muscular, with sandy blonde hair and small green eyes.  Veronica and Isaac were tall and lanky with catlike brown eyes and chocolate brown hair.  They were the spitting image of their departed mother. 
    James grabbed the remote off the table and lowered the volume on the flat screen.  The family had little by the means of nicer electronics, but James made sure his kids had the entertainment he thought they deserved.  And by deserved, he made sure they had enough to keep the other kids from making fun of them when they came over.  Times had been tough since Nina had given up the long battle to breast cancer 3 years earlier, but James took up a second job and had tried to keep his children as comfortable as he possibly could since having to move into the apartment in the city.  “Look kids,” James started, wringing his hands, unnerved by the conversation he was about to have.  “I know it doesn’t seem so serious to ya’ll, right now, but whatever’s hittin’ this country,” he glanced at Veronica to make sure she was listening, “it’s hittin’ us awfully hard, and happening right outside.”
    Veronica was the ace of the two children; fantastic grades, excelled in track and basketball, a nice group of friends.  She was a natural born leader with a good head on her shoulders.  Isaac on the other hand had failed his sophomore year in high school and was kicked off the football team for poor test scores.  His friends were into heavy drinking and experimenting with drugs and James had to struggle to keep him from following suit.  Before the country’s current crisis had even erupted, Isaac was enduring his second out of school suspension of his Senior year.  One more, the principal had warned, and he was out.
    “So there’s a sickness.  I get that.”  Veronica twisted a strand of her hair nervously, catching onto her father’s uneasiness.  “But isn’t it just gonna pass?  I mean, I know what they’re sayin’, they’re sayin’ people are