Read Online Ruby on the Outside by Nora Raleigh Baskin - Free Book Online

desk. I made it in the children’s center. Margalit goes on. “I could probably do better actually, but I think my parents like remembering my brother as the smart one, you know what I mean? Like that’s how things are supposed to be. I am the artistic one. He was the smart one.”
    She turns to face me.
    I want to say something, because I can tell I am supposed to, but I really don’t know what she means.
    â€œIs that your brother you told me about?” I ask. I remember she told me that she used to have a brother, but I’ve seen lots of kids with lots of different stories. Kids with parents they had and then didn’t, kids that didn’t have parents and then they come back, brothers and sisters they didn’t know they had, or had and then didn’t.
    I wonder if I should have known, if I should have seen his room or heard her talking about him before, but I just wasn’t listening good enough.
    Then Margalit tells me, “Yeah, Josh. Well, Josh was my older brother, but he died a long time ago.”
    â€œYour brother?” I say. “Your brother’s name was Josh?”
    â€œYeah,” Margalit says. “He was twelve years older than me. I know that’s a big difference. My mom tells me they had Josh when they were so young, like he was a mistake, but I think it’s probably the other way around. I never talk about it. You’re the first friend I’ve ever told.”
    Josh?
    Tipps?
    â€œYou’re my first real best friend, you know,” Margalit says. “I’m so glad I could tell you all this.”
    â€œYou can tell me anything,” I say.
    And something tells me not to say anything about my mother right now. Not yet. Something inside just tells me to stay quiet.
    â€œLet’s go down and see if dinner is ready,” I say, but my brain is saying something else, quietly working in the background.
    And once my brain starts thinking like that, I worry nothing good is going to come of it.

Chapter Thirteen
    I still have that teddy bear, the one the woman police officer gave me the night my mother was arrested. I don’t touch it, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. It’s still got the stiff red ribbon tied around its neck. I don’t think Matoo knows why I have a teddy bear on my top shelf. She, of course, wasn’t there that night, so I don’t have to explain it to her. We lived in Saratoga back then. I don’t even know where Matoo lived. I didn’t ever see her back then. I didn’t even know I had an aunt until they took my mother away.
    I was only five years old.
    I remember a few things, like remembering a movie you saw a long time ago that you weren’t paying too much attention to in the first place. Still, sometimes, in the dark, against my will, when I am just trying to fall asleep, snapshots start coming into my head.
    Nick and my mother were fighting. I could hear them from my bed. I didn’t think much of it. I mean, I hated it, but they fought all the time. The scary part was if Nick lost his temper, if he broke something, or grabbed my mother’s arm and left his fingerprints as dark bruises on her skin, and I would hear her crying.
    But that night, after the yelling stopped, it just got quiet.
    When I heard my mother’s footsteps coming near my door I quickly turned my head to the wall and pretended to be fast asleep. I could tell she was looking at me, listening. I tried to make my breathing slow and even. She walked away from my bed, out of my room, and she carefully closed the door behind her.
    A few seconds later I watched the car lights move across my ceiling and down my wall, I knew they had driven away.
    I wasn’t afraid. Not really. I was tucked into my bed. Safe in my room. The door was closed.
    I waited.
    And I waited.
    I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I remember is the sound of our front door cracking off its hinges—splintering,