Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking Read Online Free

Grumps’s wheelchair and spread it over his legs. I turned away, struggling with what this latest change—Grumps avoiding me—meant. Over the past two years, I’d watched a lot of things around Grumps change: what he could do for himself, what we could do together, and—maybe the saddest change—what we could do for him. But even though all those other parts of life around Grumps had changed, our relationship had stayed steady. Or I thought it had.
    Now? I had no idea what was the truth and what was a lie.
    “Time for dinner, Mr. Burke,” he said. Grumps grunted.
    Angel released the brake on Grumps’s chair and I got up to hold the door for them. Grumps cruised by me, not meeting my gaze.

Still stinging from Grumps’s omission, I said bye to Iris and found Mom’s tiny hatchback parked outside of Alton Rivers, engine idling. I pushed away a flare of annoyance that she hadn’t come in and said hello. Instead, I snuck up to the passenger-side door and peeked through the window at her: head bent over her notebook, scribbling away. Mom makes lists like other people breathe—all the time. She has this square chubby notebook with about five hundred pages in it, and that’s where she keeps everything she has to do, I have to do, things she might want to do, or what I should be doing in my free time. I tapped on the glass and she jumped. She leaned over and unlocked the door, then popped the back. I wrestled my bike in, struggling with the handlebars, then slid into the front seat.
    “Hey, honey.” She pecked me on the cheek. “How was he?” she asked, eyes on the floor.
    I shrugged, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of a full report. She hadn’t been to visit in at least two weeks. Of the three of us, Mom visits Grumps the least. She says it’s really hard to watch him slipping away and she “just can’t do it.” But—
hello!
—it’shard for me and Nini too, and we go. I pointed out that if she saw him more often, the changes would feel more gradual. She didn’t like hearing that. Basically, she likes to move forward, and Alzheimer’s doesn’t allow that—at least, that’s what Angel’s told me. He’s talked to her about it a few times.
    Her lips tightened into a thin line and she put the car in gear, then pulled into traffic.
    “Richard is looking forward to seeing you,” she said. I rolled my eyes and stared out the window. “You should give him a chance, you know.”
    More staring. I’d heard this a zillion times before and I
had
given Richard a chance. Truthfully, he hadn’t become Putrid until this past January. He knew a lot about the historical sites in Boston, which I loved, and he made my mom laugh, which was great. Then he started talking about New Hampshire every time I saw him.
    “What’s so great about New Hampshire?” I asked him, when the Granite State talk was new. That question was a huge mistake. I got swept into a forty-minute lecture about how there was no traffic up there, how beautiful and peaceful it was, and how much space there was. Evidently, he thought Boston—my hometown, my favorite place in the world—was dirty and crowded, and traffic-ridden and awful, and he wanted to leave. Putrid.
    What if he wanted to bring Mom and me with him?

    “Do-over,” Mom said. It’s what we say when our conversations start to fall apart or one of us is in a bad mood. Thenyou change the subject. “New shirt?” she tried.
    “Yeah.” I tugged on it so Mom could read
The J. Geils Band
scrawled under a white handprint. “I got it from the consignment shop on Centre Street.” I collect vintage Boston band T-shirts to go with my typical uniform: a scruffy denim skirt and crazy tights—which, in my opinion, was far less weather-inappropriate than Ms. Leather Boots and Jacket. Today’s pattern? Oversize green houndstooth.
    “Nice.” Mom dresses in suits and very somber outfits for work, but has been known to rock an Aerosmith T-shirt on the weekends. Looks-wise, I’m