Read Online The Puzzle Master by Heather Spiva - Free Book Online Page A

my cancer treats me that way—different, you know, like I’m weak, or dying. But, I’m not dead. I’m doing fine, things are getting better.”
    Marshall nodded. “No, I know. I believe you. I just … it explains a lot of things. Like why you’re so thin. And why you have such short hair.” He smiled after he said that and she laughed at him.
    “You should’ve seen me when I didn’t have hair. Wow. My head was shinier than a waxed watermelon.” They both laughed at the imagery and the air conditioning unit shut off. It was quiet and it hurt his ears.
    The truth of her situation was worse when the sound was gone.
    “Is that why you’re here in Sacramento?” he asked, rubbing his hand along the wooden floor.
    “No, my aunt really is sick. My parents are dead, and my uncle really has to take care of me. I go back to the Bay Area for treatments in a few months.”
    She had an odd life and so very different it was from his own . Yet, he felt so connected to her, somehow. Marshall suddenly felt like he had to get out of his room. He felt hot again and couldn’t breathe. Not the tickly, stifling kind, but the kind where one can’t breathe because their brain is overloaded with bad data.
    “Hey, you want to go out back with me? I can show you our vegetable garden, since I’m the one who single-handedly weeded it just a few weeks ago.” He just wanted to get outside.
    They walked onto the patio and a delta breeze, the wind carried off the bay of San Francisco and flowing to the valley, met them with a ruffle to their hair.
    “Ah, finally,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Maybe we can actually sleep with the windows open tonight.” He felt better. The wind was right; outside was right. He and she were both alright .
    He pointed out the tomatoes and squash, and basil and thyme, and other vegetables and fruits growing alongside them. Mrs. Kelso was out watering her grass. Marshall could hear the water moving about, hitting trees that came between the water’s pathway .
    “So, we’re both sick, aren’t we,” Marshall said, once they sat down on the swinging bench. They were underneath a giant sycamore tree. Missy walked along their adjoining fence wall, her tail up and flitting back and forth. The water had stopped flowing from next door as soon as they started talking. Mrs. Kelso was listening.
    Marshall knew she couldn’t hear them though. They were practically whispering.
    “I suppose so. But, you’re not going to die of your problem. Like I said, hydrochloric acid.” And she smiled.
    “Yeah, well, guess you have a right to be reading those medical journals.”
    She kicked her feet out from under her, and they moved back and forth, rhythmically and smooth, like a wave on the sea. “I want to be a doctor when I grow up,” she said. “When I’m better, it’s going to be my focus to solve all the juvenile cancer; to solve all the cancers in the world.”
    “I bet you could do it. You’ll solve like a hundred cancers and win the Nobel Prize. I can just see it, ‘And this year’s Nobel Prize for Humanitarian effort and Scientific discoveries,” Marshall said with a low voice, ‘Goes to Iris Nuevo.’” He took of a leaf from the tree and rolled it up, presenting it to her with a bow.”
    She was laughing so much now, that she clutched her stomach in pain. Her eyes scrunched up when she laughed, so that you could only see brown specs glinting back at you like the backs of beetles. Marshall laughed too and they kicked the swing into movement, rocking back and forth.
    When the laughing died down, they were quiet. Mrs. Kelso had gone back inside. She’d given up trying hear them.
    “No one has to know, Iris,” he said when the breeze picked up again, and carried their voices back to them.
    “I know,” she looked at him. “It’s why I knew I could tell you. You understand me. You have asthma; you know what it’s like to be,” she paused trying to find the right word, “restricted, in