Read Online Small as an Elephant by Jennifer Richard Jacobson - Free Book Online Page B

this time. She was giving him food. No, he was
working
for food.
    But boy, was he hungry. Really hungry. Suddenly, something new occurred to him. This food he was carrying? It was for people who couldn’t afford to buy food. He couldn’t buy food. It was for people like
him.
    He thought about the homeless people that he recognized in Jamaica Plain: the woman who sat outside the Laundromat and sometimes asked passersby to brush her hair, and the man who was dressed in a suit — a ratty suit, but still, he always wore a tie — and offered to write a poem for a dollar. Once, Jack had paid him, and the man had written this:
    We all wear bifocals
    Some invisible
    When looking down, remember to look up
    the view might be clearer
    And vice versa
    How had those people ended up so needy? Were they living comfortably one day and on the street the next?
    And now he was one of them. No food and no money to buy it. That being the case, the people at the food pantry probably wouldn’t mind if he ate just one carrot. Just one. So he did. One fresh, wiggly carrot.
    And, walking along, chomping on that carrot, trying to make it last as long as he could, he realized two more things: one, he had no idea where the food pantry was located, and two, he was heading right back into Bar Harbor — the place where just yesterday he had run from.

The outside of the Jesup Memorial Library, where Jack knew he could find directions to the food pantry, looked like half a dozen libraries he and his mom had visited: it was a small brick building with large, decorative windows.
    He didn’t think walking in with a big sack of vegetables was wise — not if he wanted to remain unnoticed — so he hid them to the right of the book-return box, behind some low shrubs. He doubted anyone would notice them.
    The inside of the library surprised him. It was elegant, like a mansion — all polished wood and heavy furniture, the kind of fancy furniture that filled his grandmother’s house. The ceilings were high — way high — with massive chandeliers.
I must stick out like a sore
—
Like my sore pinky,
he thought, looking down at the mess of a bandage. It was tattered and covered with dirt from the garden, and so loose he could easily slip it off — which he did, tucking it in his pocket. No use bringing more attention to himself.
    There were a few old people in the main room, and one family with little kids heading into the children’s room, but no kids his age. Of course not; they were all back in school. But that was OK — he was from Massachusetts, and school might start later there, or heck, his mom could have kept him out of school for their vacation.
    He tried to act as cool as possible when he approached the librarian. “Excuse me.”
    She looked up.
    “Hi, I’m visiting from Massachusetts, and I was wondering —”
    “Aren’t you lucky! Kids in Maine went back to school today.”
    He smiled and nodded. “Are there — is there a computer I can use?”
    She looked as if he’d just presented her with an insurmountable problem. “Well, normally you have to have a letter signed by your parent,” she said.
    He waited, trusting she’d give in.
    “Oh, I don’t think it could hurt,” she said, moving from the back of the desk to the front. “Follow me. I’ll log you on.” Jack followed the librarian down the stairs to a small room with more book stacks and three computers. “There isn’t room for all our books upstairs, but we can’t bear to part with them. We call this room our treasure trove,” she said.
    Jack glanced at some of the titles that had been considered too precious to let go of while she leaned over and logged him on. When she left, Jack slipped into the chair and typed
Rebecca Martel.
It took him longer than usual because his big, fat pinky kept hitting the wrong keys. He figured that Big Jack and the bartender were right, that his mom was on her way to the Bahamas, but he still wanted to put his mind at ease, to know