Free Running Around (and Such) by Linda Byler Page A

put mayonnaise on both sides of the bread, which was absolutely delicious, but so fattening. Lizzie couldn’t always be careful. As hard as she worked here on the farm, she had to eat enough or she’d feel weak and her head would start to hurt. She wasn’t exactly thin, but she enjoyed good food so much, she didn’t always care if she was as thin as Mandy and Emma.
    The morning before Emma’s sixteenth birthday, Lizzie was out hanging laundry on the wash line while Mam worked in the garden. Mam was still recovering from her time in the hospital, but she liked to spend sometime outside each day in the garden. The sunshine made her feel better, she said.
    “Lizzie, come look at all these peas!” she called.
    Lizzie dropped the towel she was holding and headed to the garden. She stopped in one row and reached down, separating a few pea stalks to have a closer look. Sure enough, thousands of pea pods were hanging in thick clusters, all ready for picking.
    “There’s a bunch of them!” Lizzie said.
    Mam rushed into the house and came back with Mandy, Emma, and even Jason, each carrying a bucket or basket.
    At first it was fun picking peas. The buckets filled up fast, and they ate many tender green peas straight from the pod. They chattered and laughed and threw peas at each other as they watched little toads and snails crawl through the dirt.
    But as the sun rose in the sky, the rows seemed longer and longer. Lizzie stretched and rubbed the small of her back. In the next row, Mandy was sitting on the ground between pea stalks, shelling one pea after another and gobbling them down. She wasn’t putting any in her basket.
    “Mandy!” Lizzie yelled.
    Mandy had a mouthful of peas and didn’t answer.
    “Stop eating peas and help pick!” Lizzie shouted.
    Mandy chewed, swallowed, and turned to glare at Lizzie. “Stop hollering!”
    “Well, pick!”
    “Pick, pick, pick. Pick, pick, pick. You sound like a chicken.”
    “That’s enough, girls,” Mam called. “Finish your rows and then come inside to help me get ready for Emma’s birthday party.”
    The girls nudged Emma and laughed as they rushed to finish their rows. Emma kept her head down as she worked, but Lizzie could tell she was excited, too. It must be just absolutely wonderful to turn 16, Lizzie thought, especially if you looked as slender and pretty as Emma.
    When Lizzie and Emma were little girls, they were chubby, actually more than chubby as they got bigger and older. But when Emma turned 13, she stopped eating calorie-laden foods, becoming steadily thinner until she didn’t look one bit like Lizzie anymore.
    Lizzie had continued to take three sandwiches in her lunch to school, more than the eighth-grade boys took for their lunches, and Emma was terribly embarrassed by this. Lizzie tried to watch what she ate, especially when Mam was around. But it was hard. Often, when Mam was upstairs working and Lizzie had to watch the twins, she ate two whoopie pies.
    Once, after Mam had made creamsticks, Lizzie ate four. Creamsticks were homemade doughnuts, but instead of being round with a hole in the middle, they were cut in an oblong shape. After they were deep-fried, Mam cut a long slit in each of their tops, filled them with creamy vanilla icing, and then put golden caramel frosting on the tops. They were the very best thing in the world of desserts, but Mam didn’t make them very often because they were so much work, with two different kinds of icing and all.
    Lizzie learned quickly that it paid to be careful what she ate around Mam and Emma, but it didn’t matter if they were busy and couldn’t see her. When things were stressful, nothing made Lizzie feel better about her upside-down world than a good whoopie pie or doughnut. They were so comforting.
    The girls rushed to clean the house and prepare Emma’s favorite foods for her birthday meal. When the table was set, Emma and Lizzie went out to the woodshed to gather more fuel for the fire.
    Emma went