Read Online Half a World Away by Cynthia Kadohata - Free Book Online

running back to the other end of the alley, though he knew it would be too late to find them by now. So he hurried toward the front of the buildings. But when he got there, no luck. And dang it, he didn’t have a key to the apartment.
    Jaden hadn’t seen anything resembling a market on the way here. But there were watermelon vendors. He opened up the dictionary and approached one of them. The woman said something that he of course didn’t understand.
    â€œProduktoviyj magazin?” Jaden asked.
    The woman now began talking quickly.
    â€œProduktoviyj magazin?” Jaden said again, tilting his head a little so the woman knew he was asking a question. Then he pointed in a random direction and said, “Produktoviyj magazin?” again. He pointed at himself. “Amerikanets.”
    The woman called out to another vendor. “American!” She and the other vendor talked for a bit and seemed to have forgotten about him, but then the woman pointed in a direction and said slowly, “Produktoviyj magazin.”
    â€œSpasiba,” Jaden said. “Da svidaniya.” He set off in the direction the woman had indicated, memorizing landmarks. He walked through row after row of old Soviet apartment buildings that looked a lot like the one they were staying in. After about fifteen minutes he paused and stood on a corner. There was a shaggy two-hump camel right in his path. The camel started to come directly toward Jaden as if intrigued by him. He wouldn’t have thought he’d be scared of a camel, but he was.
    Jaden trotted across the street, but the camel came galloping toward him. Jaden broke into a run. When he was out of breath, he looked back, and the camel was standing about ten feet away, watching him. He took a few backward steps, and the camel didn’t follow, so he moved away toward another vendor.
    This vendor was selling huge squash as well as watermelons. Yuck, he hated squash. He asked again for a grocery store. The vendor pointed in a different direction from the one he was going in. So should he trust her? He paused, then decided he would go in the direction she pointed but keep careful track of where he was. He took note of an empty lot with a pile of colorful boxes sitting on it. That would be his landmark. He set off again, and after exactly eleven minutes he came to a grocery store. It was very small, and there was a woman churning butter at the entrance. He had read that there were currency exchanges all over, including in many stores, but there was probably none here—it was too small. He went in anyway. The store was basically a wooden shack with two aisles.
    He didn’t see any shopping baskets. He picked up a small bag of almonds and a cheese, tomato, and cucumber salad in a plastic bag. In general he didn’t like vegetables, but he loved cheese a lot. When he first got to America, it was almost all he ate some days. He grabbed an uncut loaf of bread and a big block of white cheese and set the items on the counter in front of the cashier. She said something in what he thought was Russian.
    Jaden took out a crisp hundred-dollar bill Penni had given him for a situation exactly like this and showed it to her. “Ya Amerikanets,” he said.
    The cashier took the bill and held it up to the light from the window. She stepped outside and had an emotional exchange of words with the butter churner, and then she put the bill into a metal box and handed Jaden some tenge—Kazakh money.
    Jaden stepped out of the store feeling quite successful. He checked his watch and walked for eleven minutes, but he didn’t see the dirt lot with colored boxes. Huh. He was positive he hadn’t passed it yet. So he set off again, but after five more minutes he stopped and faced the opposite direction. He went all the way back to the store, and then walked back in the direction of the dirt lot. But after twenty minutes he hadn’t passed it. This wasn’t