Read Online Everything Is Fine. by Ann Dee Ellis - Free Book Online

we didn’t get ice cream.
    Mom has never ridden in the Spyder.
    Not once.
COLBY
    Colby knocks on the window.
    I am putting a hard-boiled egg on my sandwich.
    And then I’m trying to balance a chocolate chip Soft Batch on top of it.
    It keeps falling off.
    That’s when he knocks and whisper-yells, “Mazzy.”
    This is the first time this summer he has come to talk to me without me yelling first. I want to hurry and see what he wants
     but I have to get the Soft Batch to stay.
    “Mazzy,” he says again.
    “Hang on,” I say.
    “What are you doing?”
    I don’t answer because I almost have it.
    But it keeps falling off so I just go to the window. “What?” I say.
    “Can I come in?”
    His face is pressed against the glass and his glasses are off.
    “What?” I say.
    “Can I come in?” he says louder.
    “What?”
    “Can I come in? What’s your problem?”
    I look around. I’ve been trying to clean for Dad so there are rags and buckets and Windex and newspaper and stuff all over.
    Plus Soft Batch cookies spread on the table.
    “Okay,” I say.
    Then his face is still pressed against the glass.
    “I said okay,” I say.
    Still pressed. He isn’t moving.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Trying to figure out how to get in.”
    Then I remember I had put signs on the two doors: “Do not disturb. No one can enter these doors. Maintenance.”
    I’d put them up in case Mrs. Peet came over.
    I say to him, “You mean the signs?”
    “Yeah.”
    I bite my lip.
    “Yeah, you probably can’t come in,” I say.
    “I can’t?”
    “I guess not. I forgot about the doors. If I let you in then I have to let everyone in.”
    I feel bad he can’t come in because this is the first time since Mom got sick that he wants to, but I didn’t know if Mrs.
     Peet was watching our house or something.
    Then he says, “What about through the window?”
    I think about it and then I say, “Hang on.”
    I put my hair behind my ears, get up, do a karate chop, and then go to check on Mom even though Colby’s face is pressed on
     my kitchen window. I’ve never let a boy through the window before.
MOM
    Her door is closed.
    I never leave the door closed.
    I look down the hall. No one.
    “Is someone here? Bill?”
    No one answers except my mom’s voice from in her room. “You can come in, Mazzy.”
    It’s loud and really her voice.
    I look at the door.
    It’s brown.
    Then I open it and she is sitting up and sort of normal-looking.
    “Mom?”
    “Hi, baby,” she says.
    “You’re awake.”
    “Uh-huh.” There is color in her face.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Just thinking.”
    “Are you feeling better?”
    “A little bit.”
    A little bit. A little bit. She is feeling a little bit better and she is talking to me.
    “Dad’s coming home tomorrow,” I say.
    “I know.” She smiles. “You’ve been missing him, huh?”
    I’m confused. “You know he’s coming home?”
    “Yep.”
    “How do you know?”
    “You’ve been telling me every day for a week, baby.”
    I’m still standing in the doorway when she says that and I slump.
    “You mean you heard all that?”
    “I guess. I mean, yeah. But it was sort of like a dream.”
    I bite my lip and watch her move toward the edge of the bed. “Are you getting up?”
    “I think so. I think I might take a shower.”
    “Really?”
    She looks at me and smiles. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile in a month.
    “You don’t think I need to? Do I smell that good?” she says.
    I knock my head on the door frame. “It’s just, you don’t, it’s just —”
    “I know,” she says. “It’s okay.”
    “Mom, I’m sorry about your room.”
    For the first time she sort of looks around. “What about it?”
    “I’m sorry about my clothes and the books and the shoes and everything.”
    She smiles again and says, “Go let your friend in.”
    She’d heard? She’d been listening. She’d heard.
    “Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t need help?”
    “I’m okay,”