Not That I Care Read Online Free

it.”
    She looked really disappointed, walking away from me with slumped shoulders into the kitchen.
    The next weekend, when Dad’s friends came over to watch soccer on TV, he’d told them all how I’d split my brother’s head open and run away. “Way to handle pressure, Maggie!” he said. “Yeah, when the going gets tough, run away and hide—that’s my girl!”
    My mother frowned and said, “Eddie.”
    “Don’t be such a party pooper,” he told her. Then he scooped me up into his lap to watch the game with him and his buddies.

five
    I put the tooth in my Sack to show that part of me, the part that knows there’s no such thing as magic. I was born a realist, not all sentimental like CJ, with her pink room and a flowered scrunchie on her bun. It’s amazing she and I stayed friends as long as we did, come to think of it. We’re so different.
    She knows about what I did to Ned, though, so if I get up there and pull out this spatula, I know she’ll cover her mouth and open her eyes wide like she did when I told her about it. She wanted to hear every detail, even the blood part. It made me feel tough, telling her about it; not ashamed, like I was some violent jerk, but tough and strong, the way Roxanne had seemed to me. When CJ and I played together, I got to make up the rules.
    Well, that’s over with, I guess, and who cares, because it’s not like we play anymore. We’re a little beyond that, or at least I am. If I get called and take out this spatula, she might think I’m gross. She might have changed her mind about me. I could say I’m into cooking or something, I guess.
    CJ hasn’t budged. It’s beyond me how somebody can sit that straight and that still. Doesn’t her behind start to itch, so bony on the hard chair?
    Mrs. Shepard makes a clicking noise with her tongue, or maybe it’s the pointy toe of her shoe tapping on the cold tile floor. I don’t know. I don’t want to look at her and give her an idea to call on me. I need time to come up with a bunch of lies about what my things symbolize.
    “Louis Hochstetter,” Mrs. Shepard calls.
    Thank you. The boy can talk, which gives me a few seconds to think. Lou stands up abruptly behind me, jolting his chair into Zoe Grandon’s desk. I would normally turn around and smile at Zoe about Lou’s clumsiness, but not today. Zoe is my enemy, now.
    Instead I take the opportunity to jiggle stuff around in my bag. The spatula CJ would recognize, and the ballet slipper, oh, dread, I can’t let her see that. This can’t be happening. The branch she might get or not, I don’t know. I can’t make a fool of myself in front of her and everybody; what am I going to say? I should’ve walked out with Roxanne. Oh, please, somebody help me.
    My hand touches the cold, smooth medal. She won’t recognize this. I never told her about this; she doesn’t even know it exists. I clasp it in my hand, under my desk, as Lou Hochstetter scuffs by. Saint Christopher, protect us .

six
    T he day my father announced he was leaving was the Saturday after Fourth of July, three-and-a-little years ago. It had been sort of a rough year because Ned was being totally impossible, fighting at school and getting suspended, cursing at my mother, and threatening everybody who looked at him funny. Mom dragged him from one psychiatrist to another and read a hundred books on how to cope with him. She tried everything from putting us all on a macrobiotic diet to praising Ned every time he took a breath: I appreciate that you didn’t use very many curses in that sentence, Ned!
    Dad and I played catch in the backyard a lot that year. We didn’t like to be in the middle of all that tension. He also started being a daily communicant, going to Mass every morning at seven. I heard Mom proudly telling a friend of hers on the phone that my father was able to handle things so well, able to turn to God and be a calming presence for the family.
    I turned to God, too, wanting to be holy like my