Walking Backward Read Online Free Page B

it wasn’t, because Mom was dead and Dad was talking about building a time machine, and he wasn’t joking. I threw the frying pan across the room and started screaming. She didn’t say a word that time. She just took a new pan from under the stove and kept slicing vegetables.
    In the Jewish religion, the week after the funeral is called shiva. That’s a totally different Shiva from the Hindu god of destruction. During the Jewish shiva, the mourners stay home while people visit them. The visitors aren’t supposed to speak unless they’re answering a question, so they don’t annoy the mourners with stupid small talk. The mourners don’t have to ask questions if they don’t want to. They can totally ignore the visitors if they feel like it, and the visitors are supposed to just accept that. The mourners aren’t supposed to freak out and throw frying pans, but the visitors aren’t supposed to say everything’s okay, are they? But we’re not Jewish, so it doesn’t matter.
    For me, the first week of mourning was a freakish time warp. Usually I play cards every Saturday at the Dungeon, which is the basement of a gaming shop where they hold Magic tournaments. The morning before Mom died, I was at the Dungeon, and I told my friend Pete that my first soccer game was coming up the next day. But Mom died, so of course I didn’t go to Sunday’s game. I just walked around in a daze.
    That’s called aninut in the Jewish religion, that initial shock of death. It’s the first stage of mourning, and it only lasts until the burial. Then shiva starts.
    It’s probably a good thing we’re not Jewish because when the next Saturday came, and I’d been walking around the house in a daze all week, Pete called to ask if we could drive him to the Dungeon because it was raining and he didn’t want to take his bike. I was about to tell him I couldn’t go, but Dad said he would drive us because it would do me good to get out of the house. As soon as we picked up Pete, he asked, “How was the soccer game?” And that’s when it hit me that it had only been a week since Mom died. Pete didn’t even know she was dead. It was so weird because it felt like a couple of months, but really it had only been four days since the funeral.
    I said to Pete, “I didn’t actually go to the game, because my mom died.” There was silence in the car for a minute, and then Pete said, “Are you serious?” He was looking at me like I was some kind of freak for going out to play cards when my mom just died. I couldn’t explain to him about the time warp and how Dad said it would do me good to get out. It didn’t do me any good. Every time I spoke to someone, I could feel Pete looking at me weird. Maybe he’s Jewish and he thought I should be home ignoring my visitors for shiva .
    Sammy just came into my room to watch Scooby-Doo . He has a DVD of his favorite episode with the band Simple Plan. We just rented it from Blockbuster, and he watched it for three hours straight in the living room. Dad probably told him to go do something else, so he brought it up here to watch.
    We also rented some Power Ranger DVDS because Mom and Sammy used to get up at 6:30 on Sunday mornings to watch Power Rangers together. Sam found an old series at Blockbuster called Mystic Force . He says he’s getting up early to watch it tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get up with him to make sure he doesn’t wander off. Sammy talks to Mom pretty much constantly—and obviously she isn’t really there—so for all we know, she’ll tell him to wander off one day, and he’ll just go.
    He wandered into a cow field during my soccer game last night. I missed all the July games, but the coach called yesterday to ask me to play again. I’m the top scorer in the league, and they’ll lose without me. The coach didn’t say that though. He said it would help me take my mind off things. I’m guessing Simpson’s mom talked to the coach about how I’m spending the summer mourning in my