Sons of the 613 Read Online Free

know that the guy ends up putting the frog back into the box and burying it again.
    My legs are getting weaker. I trip over a hidden knot of intertwined roots and stumble forward, catching myself with my hands. I pause again, gulping air, listening. Nothing. More running.
    Josh loves our little sister, Lisa. He adores her. He’s constantly giving her piggyback rides and paying attention to her and buying her little presents, even when it isn’t her birthday.
    He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t even like me. When I first learned the meaning of the word
contempt,
I realized that it’s what he feels for me. I actually wrote that on a weekly vocabulary quiz for Mrs. Jensen’s fifth grade class. “Contempt: what my brother Josh feels for me.”
    Josh has since made an appearance in several other vocab quizzes as an example for the following words:
Mercurial. Volatile. Ruminative.
And
conundrum.
As in, “My brother is an inscrutable conundrum.”
    Because that’s what he is to me: a mystery. I don’t know what he thinks, what he does, who his friends are, where he goes at night when he comes home at sunrise, why he left college, what he’s doing home now without a job. He’s a mystery, a closed door. And I think most of the time I’m like a ghost to him, someone who barely registers in his consciousness.
    The path has taken me back close to the creek, which is about fifteen feet off to my right. The tangle of trees is up ahead of me. I’m maybe twenty seconds away from safety. I look over my shoulder. No sign of Josh. I’m fine.
    Then I look to my right, at the creek, and at the lawns that slope down toward it. Josh is there on the other side, jogging effortlessly along on a parallel course with me, relaxed and unconcerned. He waves cheerfully. I stop running. What’s the use. Then, with no warning, he alters his course and accelerates and rockets directly at me, as if the eight-foot-wide creek isn’t there between us. And it might as well not be, because he’s suddenly airborne, and I watch with my jaw hanging open as his leap takes him in an impossibly high trajectory over the water to land practically next to me.
    I stare at him, dumbfounded, my chest heaving.
    â€œDon’t . . .” I say, pausing to get more oxygen to my brain, “hit me.”
    But he doesn’t hit me. Instead he places a hand on my shoulder. I flinch anyway.
    â€œIsaac,” he says, “we have to talk.”

CHAPTER THREE
AN UNFORTUNATE PLAN IS CONCEPTUALIZED
    â€œWhat’s the first thing you say up there onstage during your bar mitzvah?” asks Josh.
    Above my head, the grass is rising and falling with each step Josh takes.
    â€œJosh, would you please put me down?”
    â€œNope. What’s the first thing you say up there, other than all the Hebrew stuff
?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    The grass is over my head because Josh has me slung over his shoulder and is carrying me back to the house. To be honest, it’s actually not that uncomfortable, now that I’ve stopped struggling.
    â€œWhat you say,” says Josh, “is ‘Today, I am a man.’”
    â€œOh. Right. Which is pretty stupid.”
    â€œYeah, I’d say so. Are you a man?”
    â€œUm . . . no?”
    â€œNo, you’re not. You’re still a boy.”
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œIt’s a simple statement of fact.”
    â€œYes, I’m aware of that.”
    An orange lawn sprinkler drifts by overhead, followed by an abandoned chewie toy. We must be crossing the Elofsons’ yard. Josh could carry me like this for an hour in any direction and the scenery would look about the same: huge suburban lawns, wooded areas, broad, quiet streets, parks, golf courses, more lawns. The Golden Ghetto, one of the wealthiest communities in the country. My parents make fun of it and tell me how sheltered and coddled I am and how much better