Read Online Black Box by Julie Schumacher - Free Book Online

back) along her wrist, and started to talk about a kid at the hospital whose parents had sexually abused him, so that he ended up in foster care. My mother interrupted her and changed the subject. “I’m going to plant some bulbs this afternoon,” she said. She went on and on about where she was going to plant the bulbs and how she was going to make sure that squirrels wouldn’t dig them up. My father nodded and listened as if he would be tested on the subject later.
    I felt as if I were eating lunch with someone else’s family—with a group of well-meaning but unpredictable strangers.
    “We could go for a walk this afternoon,” my father said. “Or maybe Dora wants to call a friend?”
    Dora took a couple of her bracelets off and rearranged them. “No. I’m pooped. I’m going to take a nap.” She went up to her room and slept until dinner.
    At six o’clock we were sitting around the table again, my father offering a rambling description of his plan to fix the bird feeder. Dora sat next to me and ate almost nothing. Her arms were bony, as narrow as blades.
    I decided to fill up the air in front of us with a description of a food fight in the cafeteria at school and a story about a girl in my gym class piercing her belly button with a needle; and then without thinking about it I described one of the quirky, aimless conversations I’d had on the bus that week with Jimmy.
    “Jimmy?” Dora pulled back her thick hay-colored hair as if removing a barrier between us. “Do you mean Jimmy Zenk?”
    “I was only talking to him,” I said.
    Dora crushed a lima bean with her fork. “Interesting,” she said. “You don’t like him, do you? You know he was left back at least once. There’s something weird about that family.”
    “He’s in my history class,” I said. “Don’t make a big deal of it.”
    “I don’t think I’m making a big deal. I just asked you a question.”
    “You asked me two questions.”
    “Let’s make it three, then,” Dora said. “Why are you hanging out with Jimmy Zenk?”
    “Does ‘hanging out’ mean dating?” my mother asked. “You aren’t dating him, are you?”
    I crumpled my napkin and put it in the center of my plate. “May I be excused?”
    “After you clear the dishes, you may be excused,” my mother said. Her tone suggested that I barely spoke English.
    “I’ve cleared them about a hundred times in a row now,” I said.
    “That’s because you weren’t locked up in a psych ward,” Dora said. She licked her fork. “Like lucky me.”

34

    The next morning there were half a dozen pills lined up on the kitchen counter for Dora, a little multicolored cluster.
    “What are all those for?” I asked.
    “They’re to keep me from turning into a werewolf.” Dora picked up a bread knife and clutched it in her fist.
“Someone stop me before I kill again!”
She swallowed the pills with a glass of juice. “God, those are tasty. You really should try some.” Half an hour later, at 10 a.m., she was asleep on the couch.
    “They’re still working some of the kinks out of her medications,” my father said. “And I’m sure she’s tired. It’s hard to sleep in a hospital.”
    I wondered whether Lorning had changed Dora. “Do you think we should hide her pills?” I asked.
    “Your mother’s taking care of that,” he said.
    I looked up at the cabinet over the sink, where my parents kept some wine and a bottle of gin.
    “It’s great having her back,” my father said. “Isn’t it?”
    I agreed that it was.
    He put his arm around my shoulders. “You know we’re all counting on you,” he said. “You’re the steady Eddie of this group.”
    I nodded.
    “There might be a period of adjustment,” my father said. “But the worst is behind us.” He gave me a squeeze. “We got through it. Right?”

35

    Jimmy called me that afternoon as I was doing my homework. “How are things going so far?” he asked. “How’s the reentry?”
    “Okay, I guess.” I