Read Online Life From Scratch by Sasha Martin - Free Book Online

rewriting classic fairy tales. On the pages of our notebooks—complete with doodles—Rapunzel became a flatulent recluse. These antics, which often sent us into hysterics, were just what we kids needed to grow close. Moreover, Pierre and Patricia giggled at them, too. I missed Connor, Tim, and Grace terribly, but goofing off with Toni kept my mind off the aching, hollow feeling in the center of my chest.
    At school, the slick, popular kids called me “Sushi” instead of “Sasha.” I didn’t know what the name meant and decided not to look it up. I made friends with a willowy girl from Russia called Alyona, one of the first people I’d met who grew up in another country. Kids mocked her thick accent and tittered when she began wearing a training bra before anyone else. I couldn’t understand why they teased her; I thought she was beautiful and that her halting speech was musical. We drew together during lunch, ignoring our sad trays littered with greasy pizza, corn dogs, or sloppy joes.
    Now in seventh grade, Michael had an easier time making friends. Mom used to say Michael’s charisma was the one good thing he got from our father. If I was “by the book,” Michael was the sort to tear the pages out to make paper airplanes. With his dimples and slate-blue eyes, and at 13 going on 20, his boyish body was starting to betray hard lines of lean muscle. Girls didn’t stand a chance. Not long after we settled into the neighborhood, Michael had a girlfriend and a small band of friends he phoned at all hours of the night.
    I knew he’d really settled in when he stopped calling Mom. Sometime before Christmas, it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard her voice in a while.
    “Do you think we should call Mom again?” I asked hesitantly.
    His eyes flashed darkly, and his right hand clenched. He looked at me a moment, then gave me a big push. I fell back against the wall. Tears filled both our eyes, but before any slipped down his face, he turned on his heel and shut himself in his bedroom.
    Though I didn’t dare bring up Mom again, I still wanted to hear her voice. After Michael finally left for karate class, I slipped over to the phone in the hallway outside his room. Though I hadn’t memorized her number, I tried a few times to punch the right ones into the phone. Each time I was wrong. I called 411, but her number was unlisted. There was nothing else to do.
    That was the end of it.
    Increasingly, Michael locked up his pain inside his room. Toni once told me she used to hear him crying in there. When she asked him what was wrong, he simply said he missed Mom. I’ve learned over the years that a closed bedroom door can reveal a broken heart as easily as it hides one. By then it seemed Michael had resigned himself to our new lot, in which clothes didn’t come from the thrift store and we had our own rooms for the first time in our lives.
    Where we had a father .

    As we found out, having a father meant leaving muddy shoes at the back door, cleaning our rooms, and playing a pickup game of ball in the backyard. It meant stern scoldings, but it also meant belly laughs and high fives. We called Pierre “Papa,” just as his daughters did. The name felt easy, new. Michael soaked up every word he said and was desperate to impress him. On Saturday afternoons, Michael followed Pierre around the house, giving him mock karate chops to the back of his knee and telling him knock-knock jokes. On Sundays, he liked to slip Bibles on the pew behind Pierre when we stood in church. Michael laughed until he cried when Pierre sat on them, honking like a distressed goose.
    Pierre worked long hours and went on lots of business trips, so having a father also meant missing him for days or weeks at a time.
    Patricia was a fixture in her enormous kitchen. When I tried to call her Mama, the name stuck like glue in the back of my throat. Michael couldn’t do it, either. For a while, we just avoided calling her anything at all: It was “excuse