Read Online Cures for Hunger by Deni Béchard - Free Book Online Page B

room.
    â€œYou’re fucking crazy!” he yelled and slammed a door so that the house shook.
    I stared at the ceiling, trying to make sense of all this, to will my brain to do more than listen to the battering of my heart. There was a secret at the center of our lives. It was like something from a dream, a shape that I glimpsed but couldn’t remember, then saw again another night; I woke knowing I’d seen it, but not what it was or meant. In the dark, I couldn’t sleep, certain that someday this thing would reappear, as
a man or a place, or just a feeling, the awareness of danger I had before I turned my eyes and saw. It would reappear and I’d have known it would but without any power to stop it.
    I might have slept, drifting in and out, sensing a subtle change like a snowfall in the night, the gradual silencing of the outside, though now the season’s shift was within our walls. Who had made this world up? Who had created all this for me? It was as if my life were important and I had to be ready to face something, but that moment never quite arrived.
    In the morning, I slowly went down the stairs, more tired than ever, yet vividly aware of the changes in the house. My mother was packing, hurrying about. My father’s truck was gone.
    â€œI don’t have time for questions,” she said. She told us only that we were moving across the Fraser River to a town called Mount Lehman. She shoved everything in boxes, occasionally pausing at the window.
    My brother sidled close, puffy dark circles under his glassy eyes. He hadn’t slept either, and the strangeness of his gaze shone in a way that made me want to run to the mirror. He said he had something to ask, and I knew from his expression that he’d readied one of the strange questions he used to torment other kids. They often involved World War III, and his favorite was, “If America dumped boxed cereal on the USSR, why would it be chemical warfare?” He then had to explain in minute detail our mother’s words about chemical foods.
    Now he said, “If a nuclear bomb strikes a mile away, do you run toward it or away?”
    I let myself see this. My gut ached. A wall of blinding light approached, melting cars and incinerating Christmas trees and cooking human flesh from the bone. Though I knew he’d trick me, I blurted, “Away! I’d run away!”
    â€œWrong,” he said, loudly but without inflection.
    My chest felt tight. I went to the kitchen door and outside, over the wet grass, past the apple tree.
    I wanted someone to tell me what to think or hope, but there was just the waterlogged fields and the windy silence of the valley and,
like a music far away, from a distant car window, the threat of nuclear extinction.
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    The packing and dumping of boxes revealed how little we owned—blankets and clothes, worn-out books, and some binders of school papers—but the moving still took all day. We carried boxes out to the van for her or helped unload. Now, as we returned for our final trip, she drove up to the house slowly, craning to see whether my father’s truck was in the driveway. It wasn’t, and she sighed, then sped onto the gravel. She told us to wait in the van.
    She loaded the spinning wheel she’d bought in hopes of making everything, even our winter clothes, from scratch. Then she filled several jugs with water. We asked why and she said that the water in the valley was from a spring and we would miss it. We pulled out of the driveway, each of us holding a shimmering jug in our lap. My sister had her hair pinned back, her forehead high and pale, her chin lowered to her collar as she looked out the window. My brother stared straight ahead. What were they thinking? I could hardly make sense of everything in my own mind. What would my father say when he knew I’d left without him? Would he understand that it wasn’t my fault?
    We passed Ten Speed where she’d