Family Reunion Read Online Free Page A

would be able to train his cockroaches to run along the sidewalks Angus had constructed from shoe-box rims inside the cookie-sheet container.
    Daddy said he felt tired, and if the cockroaches were secured for the night, he would just go lie down. Annette said she didn't care how secure the cockroaches were: Either the roaches were leaving the house this instant or she was.
    Of course any stepchild worth his red blood likes this kind of threat from a stepmother.
    Angus and I really got into the idea of Annette leaving and the roaches staying, which led Daddy to take Annette out for a late dinner while Angus and I stayed home to make ourselves grilled cheese. This was not enough supper, so we had cold cereal with bananas, and that wasn't enough, so we defrosted a Pepperidge Farm cake and split that. Then we had had enough.
    Monday Daddy went back to New York again.
    Angus agreed to keep the roaches at the library, and the librarian told Annette that in spite of everything, she could go on borrowing books because it is a free country.
    Annette said she would prefer to be welcomed for some reason other than constitutional requirements, but at least she would have enough to read now.
    Joanna's next e-mail read:
    Dear Shell—I have rules for you. Promise you'll keep them at this reunion. First, stick up for Mother. Don't let them say anything bad about her. Real mothers don't give up custody, and Aunt Maggie is bound to harp on that. Harp right back. Don't let them say anything bad about Daddy either. That will be tricky because they'll certainly want to say something bad about somebody. Get them started on Annette. That should keep everybody busy for the week you're there. I'm so glad I'll be on another continent. I'll be spared all that talk about what hard lives we've led and how remarkable that we've come through so well. Barrington will be a zoo. Enjoy. What kind of presents do you want me to buy you while I'm shopping in interesting places and you're in Barrington? Love, Joanna
    DeWitt and Veronica began showing up rather frequently. All I had to do was sit on the edge of our dock with my toes in the water, and DeWitt and his little sister would appear in one of their boats. It was rather magical, as if mixing nail polish with Vermont lake water brought boys into your life.
    “Hi,” said DeWitt. “Your brother up to anything?”
    “Why? Is your summer going slowly?”
    “It's always slow here,” said DeWitt. “This is our forty-eighth summer at the lake.”
    “You don't look middle-aged.”
    “My grandparents own the house. They bought it when they were young. All summer long is one big family reunion. The kids stay while the parents rotate in and out on weekends or during their vacations.” DeWitt waved across the lake to his huge brown-shingled place, with all its screened porches to combat Vermont flies and gnats and mosquitoes. A safe house, where families had reunions but never split up.
    “It's an off month, though,” said DeWitt gloomily. “Not one of my seventeen cousins is here. It's just me and the creep.” He pointed to Veronica, who seemed proud to have any label at all, including creep.
    An off month. What if we had an off reunion? What if they didn't make their own lemonade anymore, pressing lemon halves down on the old glass squeezer in the pantry, but just bought their lemonade in a carton?
    “So it's just me and my sister,” said DeWitt. “I'm bored.” 28
    I nodded. In real life, as opposed to summer-on-the-lake life, a fifteen-year-old boy does not play with his seven-year-old sister or notice his fourteen-year-old neighbor. But we were acceptable as summer filler.
    DeWitt was from New York too, so we exchanged neighborhood and school information, and DeWitt said he wouldn't be coming next summer because he'd have a terrific job instead. I have never wanted a job. I don't mind it when other people work, but I don't want to participate.
    I think life should be set up so you can choose where