After the Fire Read Online Free Page A

Look! It looks like someone smashed it with a rock. There’s glass all over the floor.” Sharlene peered outside. “The screen’s lying out there on the ground. What on earth would have caused that?”
    â€œThe mosquitoes are coming in,” said Melissa. She tried to grab a mosquito that drifted near her cheek.
    Sharlene pushed back a strand of hair. She looked tired. “I’ll pop that screen back on. Then let’s get our stuff out of the truck. We’ll just bring it in. We don’t have to unpack everything tonight. And we can sweep up this glass later.”
    Sharlene retrieved the screen and snapped it back into place, and then they made trips back and forth from the truck to the cabin until everything was stacked inside. Sharlene made a halfhearted attempt at organizing. “Kitchen stuff and food against that wall, duffel bags in the bedrooms…”
    Melissa set a box labeled Cody in the room with the bunk beds and then carried a box that said Melissa into her bedroom. Sharlene had gone on and on about taking enough things to the lake so they didn’t get bored and had instructed them each to fill a box with stuff to do. Cody’s box was full of his Duplo building set, action figures, a marble game and other toys. Melissa had packed mostly art supplies, library books and a needlepoint kit of a wolf that she had bought at a flea market.
    Melissa pushed her box against the wall. She shut the door and stood for a minute in the middle of the room. Her own space. Cody was definitely not allowed in.
    She checked it out thoroughly. The bed, which looked soft and lumpy, was covered by a faded yellow and orange quilt. The only other furniture was a blue dresser with four empty drawers that stuck when you pulled them. A cupboard with folding doors contained a bunch of coat hangers, a life jacket, an extra blanket and a pair of worn slippers. A pale orange curtain covered the one small window. Two of the walls were log and the other two were made out of brown boards. A calendar, open to July, with a photograph of a bald eagle, hung beside the bed.
    Melissa took the calendar down and stuck it on the shelf in the cupboard. She wanted to start from the beginning with her room, like a piece of fresh drawing paper. She pulled back the curtain and gazed out at the lake and the dock with the red canoe. She opened the window wide to let in some air, and a sweet pine smell drifted inside. She was just thinking about putting some of her stuff in the drawers when Sharlene called from the other room, “Mel, I need you to get some water for supper.”
    What was that about? Then Melissa remembered that Jill had explained that there was no running water in the cabin. Water for dishes and washing up came from an outside well with a hand pump. Melissa hadn’t really thought about it at the time but she did now. No water in the cabin also meant an outhouse. Yuck.
    Sharlene gave Melissa a plastic water container and she went out the side door, the screen door banging behind her. The sun had disappeared behind the hill, and the lake was as dark and smooth as a pane of glass. She found the pump behind the cabin, near a lean-to shed filled with firewood. She studied it for a minute, trying to figure out how it worked. She gave the handle an experimental tug. It was stiff and she pulled harder, yanking it up and down half a dozen times before the water finally splashed out of the pipe, soaking her runners.
    The problem was, the water gushed out in spurts, going everywhere except into the narrow opening of the container. When the container was finally half full, Melissa quit pumping, her arms aching, and carried it back to the cabin.
    Cody was stretched out on the couch, sucking his thumb. “It’s far too hot to light the woodstove,” said Sharlene. She set up the campstove on the counter.
    Melissa watched silently while her mother attached the propane tank and lit the burner with a