Free The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

known.
    And he certainly helped me through school. He not only tutored me and challenged me,
    but he made me realize that hard work—that the act of finishing, of completing, of
    accomplishing a task—is joyous.
    In Wellpinit, I was a freak because I loved books.
    In Reardan, I was a joyous freak.
    And my sister, she was a traveling freak.
    We were the freakiest brother and sister in history.

    My Sister Sends Me an E-mail
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Mary
    Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 4:41 PM
    To: Junior Subject: Hi!

    Dear Junior:
    I love it here in Montana. It's beautiful. Yesterday, I rode a
    horse for the first time. Indians still ride horses in Montana.
    I'm still looking for a job. I've sent applications to all the
    restaurants on the reservation. Yep, the Flathead Rez has about
    twenty restaurants. It's weird. They have six or seven towns,
    too. Can you believe that? That's a lot of towns for one rez!
    And you know what's really weird? Some of the towns on the rez
    are filled with white people. I don't know how that happened.
    But the people who live in those white towns don't always like
    Indians much. One of those towns, called Poison, tried to secede
    (that means quit, I looked it up) from the rez. Really. It was
    like the Civil War. Even though the town is in the middle of the
    rez, the white folks in that town decided they didn't want to be
    a part of the rez. Crazy. But most of the people here are nice.
    The whites and Indians. And you know the best part? There's this
    really great hotel where hubby and I had our honeymoon. It's on
    Flathead Lake and we had a suite, a hotel room with its own
    separate bedroom! And there was a phone in the bath room!
    Really! I could have called you from the bathroom. But that's
    not even the most crazy part. We decide to order room service,
    to have the food delivered to our room, and guess what they had
    on the menu? Indian fry bread! Yep. For five dollars, you could
    get fry bread. Crazy! So I ordered up two pieces. I didn't think
    it would be any good, especially not as good as grandma's. But
    let me tell you. It was great. Almost as good as grandma's. And
    they had the fry bread on this fancy plate and so I ate it with
    this fancy fork and knife. And I just kept imagining there was
    some Flathead Indian grandma in the kitchen, just making fry
    bread for all the room-service people. It was a dream come true!
    I love my life! I love my husband! I love Montana!

    I love you!
    Your sis, Mary

Thanksgiving
    It was a snowless Thanksgiving.
    We had a turkey, and Mom cooked it perfectly.
    We also had mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin
    pie. It was a feast.
    I always think it's funny when Indians celebrate Thanksgiving. I mean, sure, the Indians and Pilgrims were best friends luring that first Thanksgiving, but a few years later, the Pilgrims were shooting Indians.
    So I'm never quite sure why we eat turkey like everybody else.
    "Hey, Dad," I said. "What do Indians have to be so thankful for?"
    "We should give thanks that they didn't kill all of us."
    We laughed like crazy. It was a good day. Dad was sober. Mom was getting ready to nap.
    Grandma was already napping
    But I missed Rowdy. I kept looking at the door. For the last ten years, he'd always come over to the house to have a pumpkin-pie eating contest with me.
    I missed him.
    So I drew a cartoon of Rowdy and me like we used to be:

    Then I put on my coat and shoes, walked over to Rowdy's house, and knocked on the
    door.
    Rowdy's dad, drunk as usual, opened the door.
    "Junior," he said. "What do you want?"
    "Is Rowdy home?"

    "Nope."
    "Oh, well, I drew this for him. Can you give it to him?"
    Rowdy's dad took the cartoon and stared at it for a while. Then he smirked.
    "You're kind of gay, aren't you?" he asked.
    Yeah, that was the guy who was raising Rowdy. Jesus, no wonder my best friend was
    always so angry.
    "Can you just give it to him?" I asked.
    "Yeah, I'll give it to him.