Free The Mostly True Story of Jack by Kelly Barnhill

teachers and buildings and… everything else. This isn’t… a
nice
town. I wish it were.” She took a step backward. “Anyway, we’ll probably see you around.”
    Jack didn’t move from the step as he watched the three kids walk away.
    He went inside and, without saying hello to either his aunt or his uncle, retreated to his room and shut the door. Sighing, he sat heavily at the desk and took out his notebook.
    How
, he wrote,
is it possible that an actual conversation with kids my age makes me feel lonelier than ever?
He stared at the page for what seemed like an hour, trying to find an answer.
    He never did.

    At supper, Jack was silent while his aunt and uncle chatted happily about things that Jack couldn’t imagine caring about. Clive turned to Jack and smiled. “You met our Frankie, then? And Wendy and Anders?”
    Jack couldn’t take his eyes off his dinner. He peered into the lump of noodles and cream and canned fish that seemed to quiver on his plate like a living, disembodied brain. The whole thing had been sprinkled over withcrushed-up potato chips and something else that looked like chips but smelled strongly of onions. Jack wondered whether it was supposed to be food. He assumed it probably was, but sometimes you never can tell. Gog and Magog looked up expectantly, balancing on their hind legs. They looked like they could swallow the whole plate in one gulp. Suddenly, Jack really loved those cats.
    “Yes,” Jack said quietly. “I met them. Wendy. She’s kind of…” Jack searched for the word.
    “Prickly, yes,” Clive said. “Not entirely a bad thing.”
    “They’re the nicest kids in the world,” Mabel said. “And brave.”
    Jack tried the noodles. They tasted like paste. He winced.
    “You think that’s an unlikely descriptor for your new friends?” Clive looked at him, and Jack could have sworn the man’s eyes were twinkling.
    “No—it’s just—you see, they’re not—” Jack’s voice faltered and sputtered out. Should he start with “No, it was just the awful casserole” or “No, they’re actually not my friends”? Either way, he wasn’t going to look very good. “I don’t know,” he said finally.
    “There’s a lot of things a person can be in this world, boy,” Clive said very seriously. “Or in any world, really,” he added with a wink. “Brave is as good a thing to be as any. Will you pass me some more casserole, mylove?” he asked Mabel, who blushed. “It’s absolutely perfect.”
    When they weren’t looking, Jack fed his to the cats.

    That night, Jack rolled and sweated in his sleep. All night, he saw eyes in the walls. All night, he saw a woman running across a field of young corn. Her hands were green; her face was green; her hair was yellow and sweet like corn silk. She hid a small boy behind a house, and then she was a house—a house with sleepy windows and a grinning mouth.
    Jack woke with a start and got out of bed. The house was silent, as though it were holding its breath. A glass of water sat on the desk, its sides sweating with condensation. Jack grabbed the glass and drained it in four large gulps. He wiped his mouth with his pajama sleeve and realized that he was roasting hot. It was
never
this hot in San Francisco in the summer.
    He took off his pajama top, used it to wipe off his damp face, neck, and torso, and tossed it onto the floor. He sat down at his desk and began to draw. Without meaning to, he drew a picture of a girl, hair wisping about her eyes, at her ears, and away from her neck. Her head tilted upward and her mouth was opened, as though calling out to someone. In each hand, she held a star. Next toit, he wrote
Wendy Underground
. Lying back down, Jack fell asleep at once.
    When he woke the next morning, he had no memory of the time he’d spent drawing. When he finally noticed the picture as he tied his shoes, he was so confused that he tore the page out of his notebook and nearly threw it in the trash. On closer inspection,