Read Online My Brother's Keeper by Patricia McCormick - Free Book Online Page B

cakes and fries—I kick Jake under the table.
    “Thanks a lot,” I say.
    He just looks at me.
    “You told me Nurse Wesley was gonna put a condom on a banana,” I say.
    “So?”
    “So, she didn’t.”
    “So?”
    “So I told Arthur that she was, and he told other people and then when we had a ‘rap’session with Mr. Miller instead, I looked like a complete moron.”
    He laughs. “You believed that?”
    I did. I believed him. “Not really,” I say.
    “What’s a condom?” says Eli.
    We ignore him.
    “Did Miller tell you about the ‘60s and him being full of raging hormones?” Jake says.
    “Yeah.”
    “Did he tell you about sex being a beautiful thing?”
    “Sex!” Eli says. “You said sex!”
    I smile. I can’t help it. Just like the other day—I mean to be mad at Jake but somehow I’m not. “Yeah,” I say, “when it’s in a relationship like the one he has with Mrs. Miller.”
    We’re both laughing now. Jake’s slapping his hand on his thigh like he did when the Pissing-Off-the-World kid was covered with red dots. Eli keeps asking what’s so funny, and our mom comes in with the food, not looking like she has a terminal headache, smiling that cornball smile moms smile when their kids are getting along and not throwing sofa pillows at each other.
    And it’s sort of like the old days, which makes me wonder if Mr. D might possibly be right about not worrying so much.
    About halfway through dinner, my mom, as usual, asks how school was. And, as usual, I answer with some little factoid, on account of her bursting into tears one night right after our dad left, when she asked how school was and nobody said anything. So I tell her about the math teacher having a new baby, which happened a while ago but which I was saving for when I needed it. Eli tells her that his class is having a Save the Pandas bake sale. Jake doesn’t say anything.
    “How’s baseball going?” She addresses this question to me and Jake but Jake’s not looking at her.
    “Coach Gillis is trying me out for backup catcher.” I sound sort of loud, even to myself.
    Jake looks up. And all of a sudden I feel sort of embarrassed. Embarrassed about how totally psyched I am about something he’s obviously now too cool for. And also sort of embarrassed for him, for not already knowing about me possibly being backup catcher, and finding out at dinner in front of our mom and Eli instead of on the field like he normally would have.
    “How about you, Jake?” she says. “Are you playing shortstop or whatever it was you were last year?”
    Jake sort of grunts, then he grabs a bunch of fries.
    “You’re awfully hungry,” she says.
    He shovels the fries in his mouth.
    “Coach Gillis must be working you pretty hard.”
    Jake sort of half nods. Our mom scrunches her eyebrows together.
    So I jump in. “Badowski caught an amazing pop fly today,” I announce. “Off Arthur’s last at-bat.”
    She just looks at me.
    “And the coach taught us some new signals today. This—” I tap out a bunch of bogus signs Jake and I made up back in our Little League days. “This means bunt, and this"—I pull on my ear and tug on an imaginary hat—"means sacrifice.”
    You can tell she doesn’t know quite how to deal with suddenly having Bob Costas at the dinner table. “That’s nice,” she says finally. She sounds small, the way she does whenever we talk about sports, and I feel sort of bad.
    When she gets up to get dessert, Jake looks over my way and winks. I’m pretty sure it’s his way of saying thanks for not busting him on not going out for baseball. Which means I’m finally doing something he considers cool, which normally would’ve made me feel’good, but actually makes me feel surprisingly rotten.
    So I get up, give Eli my dessert, and go upstairs and stare at the Stargell for a while.
    A fter dinner, when I come downstairs to ask my mom about getting new cleats, I see her sitting at the kitchen table, counting the money from her