Addie on the Inside Read Online Free Page B

when a boy
I like tells me goodbye. I think I suffer when my father
gives me one of his silent looks. But my father
would not sell me for any amount of money. At night
I sleep in a warm bed. In the morning
I sit in a warm kitchen reading the paper,
eating powdered doughnuts.
    Nadia says, “I don’t know anything about happiness.”
    I go find my father, give him a hug. “What’s up?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “Can’t a girl just give her father a hug?”
He kisses the top of my head, says, “You smell like sugar,”
and doesn’t move until I let him.

The Smell of Clove
    Does it count as breaking up if the words are never said?
On Monday DuShawn sidles up to me at my locker, goes,
“What’s up, girl?” His fingers working a rubber band, his
jaws chewing gum that smells of clove, the word
girl
full
of honey.
    Maybe we half broke up. Maybe when you half break up,
you don’t have to say anything. There are so many things
I could say, but I like the smell of clove, and there’s his
hand reaching out for mine. “Not much,” I say, taking it,
“what’s up with you?”

I
Love
    At lunch DuShawn says to me,
“You always punctuate my epiphanies
with pain.”
    â€œSay what?” says
    half the table. But I laugh, I get it,
it’s our little joke, a line from
one of our two favorite comic strips—
not
Get Fuzzy
, the other one,
about the cow and the boy.
    DuShawn gives me his crooked smile,
his face breaking out in dimples,
and I know it’s a look that’s meant
for only me, and I feel my insides
flip and my brain flop, and I know
I should know better, but so what,
so what.
    I heart love.

Old Friends
    Another Saturday night and it goes like this:
Bobby’s dad calling out, “Anybody home?”
My mom calling back, “Door’s open, Mike!”
Bobby poking me, saying hey. We escape
to my room while Mike makes one of his
famous stir-fries and my mom puts her tofu
key lime pie in the fridge to chill.
    â€œChill,” Mike says to my dad, who’s asking
what he can do to help. Halfway up the stairs
Bobby and I roll our eyes. Parents
can be
so
embarrassing. Grandma puts out
some cheeses and tells the cats to scat.
    Later we all look at old photos Mike found
while cleaning out a drawer. There we are,
Bobby and me, our squishy little faces
almost as red as they are now as we’re forced
to look at ourselves as babies. “Always thought
we’d have more,” Mike says, and my mother
leaves it unspoken that she and my dad had
always planned to have only one.
    The grown-ups get to talking, remembering
this time, remembering that. Slowly the house
fills with love, like a balloon with helium, only
it feels like it’s us being filled up, growing light-
headed and silly.
    â€œLife is full of surprises,” Mike says, a catch
in his throat. Grandma nods as the palm of her
hand floats down Kennedy’s back. “Indeed
it is,” she says. They are looking at a wedding
picture of Bobby’s parents. Mike asks if he
could have another cup of tea.
    Bobby and I have known each other our whole
lives. He’s my oldest friend. One day, if we’re
lucky, we will be old friends, sitting around
with our kids after supper, looking at photos,
remembering ourselves now, saying life
is full of surprises.

Framed Photo
    Bobby’s mom was an actress.
I saw her on television once.
Twice, if you count the commercial
for Anthony’s Albany Auto.
The main time was when she had a part
on a show I was too young to watch
but my parents let me stay up to see
“just this once” because it was special.
She played a patient in a hospital, dying
of some Hollywood disease.
She looked pale. Her voice sounded soft
and far away. I remember the way she cried
and said, “How can I leave the children?”
I was impressed that she could cry like that.
    That night I had a bad dream and crawled