Free A Hole in My Heart by Rie Charles Page A

without cheese
    Is like a kiss without a squeeze.
    Love, Uncle Robert

11

    This evening I’m tired. Very, very, very tired. Looking after the Quinns was tough. I don’t know why. Their laughter seemed louder; it grated on my ears. I wanted to tell them to go jump in the lake. Or I guess the ocean is more appropriate here.
    Now I’m curled up on my bed — again — with Anne of the Island. I read Anne of Green Gables three times, once with Mum and twice myself. I love Anne even though there are too many big words and quotations, which I don’t understand and don’t really want to. I remember long ago deciding when it got complicated and too full of description I’d jump over it. But Mum’s eyes were like the Lake of Shining Waters when she read Anne’s imaginative place names. My eyes water — again.
    For Christmas last year, I got Anne of Avonlea . I especially like the school parts and Davy and Dora. All Davy’s boldness and questions. But the first chapters of Anne of the Island are nowhere near as good. I had to renew it, just like Lizzie. Maybe Aunt Mary’s right — it’s too old for me and Lizzie. Right off I don’t like the boy-girl stuff, even though I like that Anne ignores Gilbert. Some of the girls in Penticton were like that. Josie Williams, for example. This is what she wrote in my autograph book:
Nora now, Nora ever,
    Mackenzie now, But not forever.
    How dumb can you get? And Sylvia Graham’s is not much better:
If all the boys lived across the sea,
    Oh what a great swimmer Nora would be.
    There are lots of things to think about other than boys, in my opinion.
    In Anne of the Island, I particularly don’t like Diana saying, “I have a feeling things will never be the same again.” That’s exactly how I feel, but how can Diana? Anne’s only going away from home for a few months. She can come back any time she wants because Marilla is still there. Besides, she’s going away with Gilbert and Charlie Sloane and will be boarding with her friend. And Diana isn’t going away at all. They have no idea what it’s like to go somewhere where there’s no one you know, not a one. Leave everyone behind.
    Including your mother.
    I roll around onto my back and stare at the ceiling and out the window as usual, the book upside down on my chest. The never-ending rain drizzles down the glass and the light from the streetlamp flows in yellow waves.
    But maybe Anne would understand. Her parents died, too, and she never had a real home until Avonlea. Maybe that’s why home is so important to her. Like me.
    The book slides off my chest as I tuck my hands underneath my head and stare around the room, at the blackboard, my old brown bureau, the closet, and the white desk Uncle Robert made for me, the exact same as Lizzie’s.
    Maybe I’ll never go back to Penticton. Maybe that’s what Anne means by a “bend in the road.” I’ve gone around a bend and can never go back. Maybe Dad will never be happy, maybe Dot will always be silly and boy-crazy and hate me. But I do like the Quinns. Maybe I have to choose a way to be happy. Or a place.
    Oh, Mum, I’m all muddled up.
    I’ve cried so much you’d think my crying glands would have dried up by now. But I feel wet streaks on my cheeks. They match the rain on the windowpane.
    And Anne’s favourite person, her kindred spirit, Matthew, died too. Why do people have to die?
    â€¢ • •
    I wake, fully clothed, to the light shining from my bedside lamp. I twist the switch to off. Blackness engulfs me as I crawl under the covers. My blackboard still reads:
TALK TO ME
    DAD
    TALK TO ME
    ABOUT MUM
    â€¢ • •
    Monday, Mrs. Bramley announces in Music class the school’s going to put on The Wizard of Oz . I sang in the Junior and Intermediate church choirs in Penticton but I haven’t sung at all since before Mum got sick. Even around the