The Trouble Begins Read Online Free Page A

The Trouble Begins
Book: The Trouble Begins Read Online Free
Author: Linda Himelblau
Pages:
Go to
so ugly I can't look at it. It looks dirty. They talk and talk to each other while we wait and sometimes they laugh but I can't understand what they're saying. My dad never talks to me like that, like he's just a kid himself, and he never talks to Thuy or Lin or Vuong either. He works too hard to just mess around chattering like a kid.
    My turn finally comes. I heave my six chickens onto the counter. The lady drags them across the scanner. “That'll be forty-eight dollars and seventy-two cents,” she says. I hand her the “Free Chicken” papers.
    “What's this?” she demands.
    “Free chicken,” I answer loudly so she knows I can read it.
    She pounds on a little bell on her counter. People turn and stare. A man in a brown jacket with the store name on it hurries over. The lady talks to him so everybody can hear.
    “Where did you get these, young man?” He waves my “Free Chicken” papers in my face. I don't want to say that I got them out of trash cans so I shrug. He rips them in two. “Come with me,” he commands. He keeps talking abouttaking things from mailboxes and calling the police. When we walk by the front door I run for it. I'm out the door and down the street before he can grab me or get anyone else to grab me. I hear him yelling behind me. I'm glad the kid from school didn't know me or he might tell the man my name. This country cheats. They say things are free when they're not.
    When I get home I sneak in the back door but Thuy and Lin are in the kitchen. “Get some soda,” they order me. “Clear off the table.” I clear the dirty dishes and the teapot and the potato chips off the table. My grandma is still too sick to cook good food and my mom works late every day. I don't have any chickens for a chicken feast. We have to eat American frozen food with slimy cheese. Thuy and Lin and Vuong tear off big pieces of pizza even though Thuy didn't cook it long enough. I pull strings of cheese off mine. I eat little bites. “Du, do you have homework?” asks Thuy like she's my boss.
    “Nope,” I say, the way Anthony always says it at school with a tricky smile and my head tipped back.
    “Then you do dishes,” orders Thuy. I don't care. Pizza plates and soda glasses. When they're done I pour hot water over dried-up American noodles in a white foam cup. I slurp up the noodles and go see if my grandma wants some. She's asleep.
    I watch the TV while American people laugh and laugh but I don't know what's funny. Nothing, I think. Channel eleven has a bear running around at night getting into people's garbage cans. Vuong comes in. “Gimme the remote,”he orders. I sit on it. The channel changes. I bounce up and down on the remote and the channel changes again and again. We laugh.
    “What's a Jamestown diorama?” I ask him.
    Forty minutes later we have a shoe box with one side cut off. Inside there's a paper fort leaning over and some trees leaning further over and a river made of foil from the pizza that looks like pizza foil.
    “There,” says Vuong. “You've got a Jamestown diorama to turn in tomorrow.”
    “It's ugly,” I say.
    Vuong laughs. “You waited too long to start,” he says. “Better ugly than not at all.”
    Vuong would never take anything that ugly to school. Thuy and Lin laugh when they see it. I wait until they go to bed. Like the bears I sneak out to the garbage cans. I push my Jamestown diorama deep down under the garbage bags. I'm not taking that ugly thing to school. Maybe I'll make a good one. The best one in the class.

    I still see that old man from next door spying on our house through our window. If he spies on our house all day when I'm at school our fat Buddha with his big wide smile is going to be laughing back at him. The Buddha will sometimes give you things if you ask right but he wouldn't give anything to that old man. That old spy must wonder about the pictures of people from Vietnam and the red lights thatlook like candles. I wonder about the pictures too but
Go to

Readers choose