Read Online The Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart - Free Book Online Page A

none of the posters of actors or rock stars I favored. “It’s crazy girly, isn’t it?” Sonia said. “My father had it decorated for me when I was seven. I’m afraid it would hurt his feelings if I changed it.”
    “It’s really . . . clean,” I said.
    She gave me a rueful smile, and then bent to lift the bottom of the pink-and-white bedspread. I crouched to look underneath the bed and saw a crazed jumble of clothing, books, candy wrappers, crumpled paper, and, pushed way back against the wall, a few old Barbie dolls.
    “Wow,” I said. We straightened up. “Your mother doesn’t check under here?”
    Sonia shook her head. “It’s the same under her bed,” she said. “The whole house is like this. You don’t want to look in the kitchen cabinets.” She sat on the edge of her bed and fixed me with a hard stare. “Can you keep a secret?” she asked.
    “Sure,” I said.
    “No, I mean, really. Can you really keep a secret? Can you swear to never, ever tell?”
    “Yes,” I said, growing annoyed.
    “Even under pressure? Even if someone asks you questions?”
    “I can lie,” I said. “I’m a good liar.”
    “That’s true,” she said. “I noticed that yesterday.” She looked away, moving her fingers in the air like she was playing invisible piano keys. I’d learn to recognize this gesture as a sign of anxious thought. At that moment it just seemed as strange as everything else about her—her crazy mother, her childish room, the unnerving intensity in her manner. Even with all that, I didn’t feel any urge to retreat from the friendship we were beginning. She fascinated me, and whatever she was thinking of telling me, I wanted to know what it was.
    “So, yes, I can keep a secret,” I said.
    “Good,” she said, her tone suddenly brisk and decisive. “I’ve decided to tell you everything.” She pointed at the digital clock on her bedside table. “What does that look like to you?”
    “A clock.”
    “No, but what does it say?”
    “It says three-fifty-three.”
    She shook her head. “Not to me, it doesn’t. To me it says, ‘Hello, I am a bunch of little sticks.’ ”
    “I don’t get it,” I said.
    “Numbers,” she said. “Sometimes I can’t read them. They reverse or turn themselves upside down. They come loose and float around in space. Sixes look like nines. Fives look like threes. And sometimes they all just fall apart into a bunch of little sticks.”
    I squinted at the green display on the clock until the numbers blurred, but I couldn’t make them do any tricks. “Why?” I asked.
    “I’m dyscalculate,” she said. “It’s a rare condition that usually occurs only in the brain-damaged. No one knows why I have it.”
    “What does it mean?”
    “It means I’m stupid,” she said. “I can’t do math. Sometimes I think I’m doing math, and then I realize I’ve just written a bunch of little lines. Who would do that besides a stupid person?”
    “You don’t seem stupid,” I said.
    “I’m good at hiding it.” Her voice was almost angry now, and she was watching me with a narrow-eyed intensity, as if she expected that at any moment I’d denounce her, slap her across the face like her mother had. “I have good days, when I can read numbers. On bad days, if I’m in class and I can’t find the right page number in the book, I let it fall off my desk. The person who picks it up automatically turns to the right page before they give it back. If the teacher asks me to read numbers on the board, I squint and say I forgot my glasses. If I’m supposed to call someone and I can’t dial their phone number, I’ll tell them I got a busy signal or that my parents were on the phone all night. Some numbers I can dial because I’ve memorized the pattern on the phone.” She punched a number on an imaginary phone in the air. “If I have to pay for something, I just hand someone the bills and hope they’ll give me the right change, and if they say, ‘This is only a