Free Chasing Secrets by Gennifer Choldenko Page B

can’t breathe too loudly, open the window, or pee too much.
    I decide not to leave the food now. I should wait until Maggy comes down first. I’m carrying the basket down the stairs when I trip on the last step and fall flat on my face.
    Before I can get up, Billy appears, his hair uncombed, his chin unshaved.
    He surveys the spilled potatoes, watches as I chase after the orange that rolls across the floor. “What are you doing?”
    “It’s backward day. I was bringing Maggy breakfast.”
    “Didn’t she want it?”
    “Oh. Um. She ate some of it already,” I say, cleaning up the mess, throwing it all haphazardly back in the basket.
    Billy’s left shoulder is wrapped in a towel, held tight with his right hand.
    “What happened?” I ask.
    He unwraps the towel. His shoulder is badly bruised, and there’s crusty brown blood making it hard to see the wound.
    I reach out, but he steps back. “How’d you do it?”
    “Just woke up this way.” He winks with his good eye.
    I survey his clothes. He hasn’t been to bed yet.
    “Let’s get it cleaned up.”
    Billy follows me into my room and sits on my bed. I set the basket down on my dresser doily, pour water from the pitcher onto a towel, and gently pat the dried blood away. After the cleaning, it doesn’t look so bad. Just one snaggly wound line and some bruising and swelling.
    “Needs stitches,” I observe. I’ve never done sutures by myself. I bet I could, though.
    “I’ll do it,” Billy says.
    “On yourself?”
    “Sure. Could you get the suture kit?”
    I run down to get the kit, along with ice, a clean rag, towels, and a bandage roll. Jing stacks the clean rolls in a tin box. I never realized just how much Jing does for us, until now. Does he know how much we miss him?
    “Thanks,” Billy says when I bring the supplies back to my room. He lays a towel on the bed. I watch him clean the wound area with a rag. He ices the skin around the cut and then threads the suture needle. He takes a deep breath, his needle hand wavering, then sticks it into the skin and pulls through.
    I can’t watch this anymore. I sit down next to him on my bed and take the needle from him. “Can you cough?”
    He nods. He’s seen Papa do this trick as many times as I have. A cough distracts a patient from the pain.
    “On the count of three. One, two, three.” He coughs, and I stick the needle in.
    I pull the thread through and tie it off. “How was that?”
    “Not bad.”
    He breathes in, I count, he coughs, and I stick the needle in. I’m glad he needs only five stitches. When I’m done, he takes the thread from me, cuts it, splits it in half, and ties it off—all with one hand.
    He could be a doctor if he wanted to.
    “Do you want me to bandage it?” I ask.
    He nods, and I begin to wind Jing’s bandage around the stitches.
    “Not so tight,” he whispers.
    I loosen the wrap.
    When I’m done, he shoots me one of his glittering Billy smiles, and I hope, hope, hope the old Billy is back.
    Gently, I inspect his black eye. It’s healing nicely. “Billy? Why are you so angry?”
    “Why are you sneaking around the third floor?”
    I swallow hard. “I’m not.” I try to keep my expression neutral.
    “Okay, then,” he whispers. “I’m not angry, and you’re not hiding something on the third floor.”
    “I’m not hiding anything.”
    “Uncle Karl thinks you are.”
    My stomach drops. “He does?”
    Billy nods. “There’s a cat with kittens up there, right?” He stands up, ready to leave.
    “Right.”
    Billy laughs. “Orange Tom has been busy.”
    I nod too enthusiastically.
    “Everybody has secrets…even Orange Tom.”
    “Papa doesn’t believe in secrets,” I say.
    “Papa is a good man.”
    “Why are you so mad at him all the time, then?”
    Billy shrugs. “He expects too much. I’m not like him.”
    “I’m not like him, either.”
    “You’re more like him than I am. I’m like Mama. She liked to have fun. With Papa you have to do the right