Читать книгу Before the Storm - Diane Chamberlain - Страница 13

Andy

MOM PUT HER VITAMINS IN A LINE by her plate. She ate breakfast vitamins and dinner vitamins. Maggie and I only ate breakfast ones. Maggie passed me the spinach bowl. Dumb. She knows I don’t eat spinach. I tried to give it to Mom.

“Take some, Andy,” Mom said. “While your arm is healing, you need good nutrition.”

“I have lots of nutrition.” I lifted my plate to show her my chicken part and the cut-up sweet potato.

“Okay. Don’t spill.” She put her fingers on my plate to make it go on the table again.

I ate a piece of sweet potato. They were my favorite. Mom made sweet potato pie sometimes, but she never ate any. She didn’t eat dessert because she didn’t want to ever be sick. She said too many sweet things could make you sick. Maggie and I were allowed to eat dessert because we weren’t adults yet.

“Andy,” Mom said after she swallowed all her vitamins, “your arm looks very good, but maybe you should skip the swim meet tomorrow.”

“Why?” I had to swim. “It doesn’t hurt!”

“We need to make sure it’s completely healed.”

“It is completely healed!”

“You’ve been through a lot, though. It might be good just to take a rest.”

“I don’t need a rest!” My voice was too loud for indoors. I couldn’t help it. She was pressing my start button.

“If your arm is all better, then you can.”

“It’s better enough!” I wanted to show her my arm, but I punched it out too hard and hit my glass of milk. The glass flew across the table and crashed to the floor. It broke in a million pieces and milk was all over. Even in the spinach.

Mom and Maggie stared at me with their mouths open. I saw a piece of chewed chicken in Maggie’s mouth. I knew I did an inappropriate thing. My arm did.

“I’m sorry!” I stood up real fast. “I’ll clean it up!”

Maggie catched me with her hand.

“Sit down, Panda,” she said. “I’ll do it. You might cut yourself.”

“I’ll get it.” Mom was already at the counter pulling off paper towels.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “My arm went faster than I thought.”

“It was an accident,” Mom said.

Maggie helped her pick up the pieces of glass. Mom put paper towels all over the milk on the floor.

“My arm did it because it’s so strong and healed,” I said.

Mom was scrunched on the floor cleaning milk. Sometimes when I talk, she looks like she’s going to laugh but doesn’t. This was one of those times.

I put my napkin on top of the spinach to clean off the milk.

“Andy,” Maggie said, while she got five or maybe six more paper towels. “I know you’re upset that you might not be able to swim, but you’ve got to think before you react.” She sounded exactly like Mom.

“I do,” I said. That was sort of a lie. I try to think before I act, but sometimes I forget.

Mom stood up. “We’ll check your arm again in the morning.” She threw away the milky paper towels. “If it still looks good and you feel up to it, you can swim.”

“I’ll feel up to it, Mom,” I said. I had to be there. I was the secret weapon, Ben told me. I was the magic bullet.

The pool was the only place where my start button was a very good thing.