Free Bigger than a Bread Box by Laurel Snyder Page A

glad you’re … adjusting. I’ve … missed you.”
    I turned away from her. “Know what?” I said. “Dad’slooking for a job. He told me so. He might go back to teaching. And he cleaned the house.”
    “That’s nice, dear,” she said to my back, but she didn’t sound like she meant it. Or maybe she didn’t sound like she believed me. “I need to call your father. We should talk. I’ll call him tomorrow. Okay?”
    “Okay,” I said, still facing away.
    That should have made me happy, but it didn’t. Mom didn’t sound very excited to call Dad, so I added, “It’ll be nice, once we’re home. Won’t it? Once things are better? And we can go back to normal?”
    She took a minute before she said, “I hope so. Maybe. We’ll see.”
    I didn’t say anything else. I closed my eyes hard, and she kissed the back of my head. There was nothing more I wanted to say. I turned over and breathed into my pillow, until it felt all warm and smothery.
    I didn’t move, so finally she left, closing the door carefully behind her with a click.

C HAPTER 9
    A fter that, things started to feel almost normal, as long as I didn’t think too much about the fact that I was in a strange place and my dad wasn’t there and I was pretty much all alone. At home I wasn’t exactly
talking
to my mom, but I wasn’t
not
talking to her anymore either. She started working at a hospital downtown, but she said it was a really rough place to work and it wore her out. Since she was just filling in for other people, she mostly got lousy shifts. She was working late at night and sleeping a lot during the day, and I could see she wasn’t happy. It made me feel a little better about everything. That’s mean, I know, but sometimes the truth just is. The sooner she got sick of Atlanta, the sooner we’d go home.
    I walked to school in the mornings. During lunch and in the hallways, I hung out with Hannah and her friends and tried not to mess up being Becky. I almost neverraised my hand in class, but my teachers were good, and the classes were interesting. Really, it was fun, like I was playing a game. I felt like I was keeping a secret all the time. I tried to think of it as a magical vacation. Sooner or later, I’d go home.
    I paid attention to what the other kids wore, and thanks to the bread box, I got some new clothes for myself. That was always fun, the wishing! Things I didn’t think Mom would notice. Better jeans. New tennis shoes. An expensive hoodie like some of the other girls had, but in gray like my old ratty one so it would blend in. Nothing too fancy. Nothing that called attention to itself. I also managed a few small things I wanted, like a cool silver watch. Little things. Each time I wished and then something appeared in the box, I got a shiver down my spine. It never got old.
    It took me a while to think of it, but eventually I realized that the best way to use the bread box was to wish for things I could give away. Of course, Mom and Gran couldn’t notice the things I didn’t keep. So I wished for fancy chocolates, which I took to school and handed out in the cafeteria. I wished for handmade beaded hair ties that Hannah said she liked. Soon everyone had a pair. My pockets were always full of gum. I always had an extra pen handy. When someone borrowed my lip gloss in the bathroom, I was able to say, “Oh, here. You can have it. I have a bunch of them!” It was nice, sharing. It was nicewhen people said thank you. I always had lunch money to spare when people needed to borrow. I was rich for the first time in my life, and I liked it. Other than that, I tried to stay quiet. Mysterious.
    A few times, Hannah invited a bunch of us to her big, shiny house. Girls
and
boys, which made me nervous, so I talked even less than usual. We watched movies on her enormous flat screen and ordered pizza with fancy toppings, and I tried to disappear into the huge pillows on the velvety brown sofa. I never invited anyone back to Gran’s.