Husky Read Online Free Page A

him listen,” Jock offered.
    â€œNow that’s a pretty bit. I like that song, but it’d be better in English.”
    â€œWell, I agree with that, Davey boy,” Jock said with a smile.
    Jock was the only person to call me Davey, I liked it a lot. I miss it.
    Nanny kept trying to talk to me. But I wouldn’t answer her. I was so focused on listening. I really didn’t want to do anything. And I guess I was trying to imagine what was happening. When the music speeds up, are they angry? Is something bad happening? What’s wrong? And since I didn’t know anything, I could sort of make it all up. Thatwas the best part. Honest. Imagining these people with big wide mouths saying words I didn’t even know, and the high notes and the getting louder all had a meaning just for me. I had to figure them out. So I started to follow in the book. And then she sang, the woman from the cover, Leontyne Price. She had dared me to pick this up, and to take her home, and I was hooked.
    There’s this aria in
Aida
called “O Patria Mia,” where Aida, who’s been sold as a slave to the Egyptians, misses her home country of Ethiopia, and she calls out to it. It’s sort of too hard to say what it means, but it’s about a place you want to go but can’t. A place where you know you belong but where you can’t be anymore. You miss it, and you wonder if it misses you. I heard it that night, and I read along, and I sort felt like it was the opera calling out to me. And from then on, I loved it.
    I listened to the whole thing, all six sides, that night. And again the next night, and the next and the next, until Mom took me back to the record shop and bought me another opera, just to stop the endless
Aida
. Jock cleared out the shelf for me and said all my operas couldalways go there. There was a spot for me.

    By the time I get to Sweet Jane, Norma and the druids have peace, twice, and the bakery is closed. It’s time for the Big Bake.

CHAPTER 3
    On Sunday nights, Sweet Jane closes early for the Big Bake. We need to get started. I say
we
, but I only help a little, barely any. I just like to say we because it’s nice to feel a part of it. All week Mom makes breads and cookies and cakes for our store, but on Sunday nights, she does the Big Bake, where she makes all that stuff for other places. Rolls for six Italian restaurants, desserts for three. Biscuit mix in a big plastic tub for a Southern restaurant in Crown Heights, and there are a bunch more, but I can’t remember. The Big Bake is also for special orders by regular people too. Stuff like birthday cakes, special desserts for people when they want to feel happy about something. Mom loves that stuff. Anniversary cakes and graduation cakes, all of it. She likes making somethingfor a special occasion. And I like watching her do it.
    I knock on the glass door twice to let Jules, the girl who works the register, know to let me in. It takes Jules a while. She’s really cool, so she moves really slow. She even talks slow. Jules has this thing with her voice that she doesn’t need to say words like everyone else, and she’s annoyed that you think she does. So she takes her time because it is her time, and you can just wait. Even for the door.
    â€œH-EY. Your mom’s in b-ack,” Jules says as she unlocks the door. I start to go in when right behind me I hear, “Hey, little man, hold that door for me, okay?”
    It’s Paolo. Paolo is sexy. At least Jules thinks so, because she gets flushed when she hears him and straightens her bangs. Paolo is one of the other bakers and the only person anywhere who calls me man. Mom hired him about three years ago, when he had moved to New York with his girlfriend, Stacy, from Brazil. Stacy met him on vacation, and I think it was like a Hermit Crab thing. You want them so bad when you’re there, because you’re at the beach and it’s fun and you need to get