Read Online Black Box by Julie Schumacher - Free Book Online Page A

carried the phone into my bedroom. “She sleeps a lot.”
    “How much is a lot?” I could picture him running the palm of his hand across his hair.
    I told him I wasn’t counting the hours. “We just want to put all this behind us.”
    “Yeah, that makes sense,” Jimmy said. “Do your parents have to take time off from work this week to stay home with her?”
    “What do you mean?” I flopped down on my bed. “She’s going to school. You’ll see her tomorrow. She’ll be on the bus.”
    There was a silence. “Going back to school so soon will probably be hard for her,” Jimmy said.
    “What else is she going to do?” I asked. “She’s a kid. Kids go to school.”
    “Yeah, mostly they do,” Jimmy said. Another silence. “My mother might be willing to talk to your parents.”
    I remembered what my mother had said about Marilyn Zenk. “I don’t think my parents want to talk to anyone. Besides, Dora seems fine, mostly. Tired but fine. And my parents seem fine. And I guess I’m fine also.”
    “Glad to hear it,” Jimmy said. “Unanimity. Family harmony. Very impressive.”
    “Are you making fun of me?” I asked.
    “Yeah. Is that going to bother you?”
    I thought about it for a minute. “No,” I said. “Probably not.”
    “That’s what I like about you,” Jimmy said.
    “What?”
    “Hang on a second.” I heard him talking to someone—probably his mother. “Okay, sorry,” he said, coming back to the phone.
    I wanted to ask him what he liked about me, but I didn’t know how to raise the subject. So I told him I’d see him on the bus, and I hung up the phone.

36

    The next morning at breakfast, Dora contemplated the multicolored pills on the kitchen counter. She took the first pill while my mother watched. She took the second pill and the third. “Ho-hum,” she said, swallowing the rest of the pills all at once with a glass of juice.
    Then she handed my mother the empty glass and turned to me and showed me the pills in a little wet cluster under her tongue.

37

    We walked to the bus stop together over a carpet of leaves. The air was cold and smelled somehow of metal. “Do I look bad?” Dora asked.
    “No.”
    “Maybe that’s because you’re looking at my feet.”
    I stopped walking and faced her. Dora was five inches taller than I was so I had to look
up,
which might have made the bags under her eyes seem bigger. “You’re pale,” I said. “But not very.”
    “Pale is okay,” Dora said. “Pale is acceptable.” We kept walking. “The only pills I didn’t take are the ones that make me tired,” she said. “In case that’s why you’re sulking.”
    “I’m not sulking.” The morning was gray; clouds were collecting in layers above us. “I don’t think you should do that, though,” I said. “Mom thinks you swallowed them.” Dora had spit the pills into the bushes when we left the house.
    “I need to stay awake at school, for god’s sake,” Dora said. “I’ll be behind in all my classes.”
    “You’re going to catch up fast,” I told her. Our mother had written her a note that said,
Please excuse Dora Lindt for her lengthy absence. She was ill.
    Dora took off her backpack and unzipped it. “Do you know what one of the nurses at the hospital told me? She said I was selfish and self-indulgent. She said I was putting my entire family through a very hard time.”
    “The nurse doesn’t know you, Dora,” I said.
    “Nobody knows me.” Dora rooted through her backpack.
    I wanted to tell her that
I
knew her. Didn’t I? “You should probably tell Mom you didn’t swallow those pills,” I said.
    She didn’t answer.
    “What are you looking for?” I asked. “We’re going to miss the bus.”
    “I don’t give a shit about the bus.” Dora folded a stick of gum into her mouth. Her hands were shaking. “If you want to tell Mom I didn’t take the pills you can go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.” She zipped up her backpack. “If you want to rat on me and