Read Online The Sky Is Falling by Caroline Adderson - Free Book Online

Skipper. They lived on an acreage where they raised sheep. But the clogs allowed me to imagine her slipping them on in spring and running out to the barn to greet the lambs that had been born in the night. Kicked in the corner were Pete’s Birkenstocks, the cork soles crumbling, plastic bread bags stuffed inside them, his trust fund untouched. Dieter’s Adidases were there too, a Marxist-leaning red. As for the other shoes, including a giant’s rubber boots, I couldn’t begin to guess who owned them because what had really changed with the season, with the arrival of autumn, was that my housemates were starting to become fleshed-out characters.
    I decided to study in the kitchen. With the addition of the bookshelf, my furniture situation had greatly improved, had, in fact, doubled, but I still didn’t have a desk. In the kitchen I would have the luxury of a table. They always broke with that song and, as soon as I heard it, I could flee upstairs. I brought down my translation homework and cleared a space among the potluck dishes.
    1 . Comrade Popov says that he received a letter every day from his wife in London.
    2 . This author will spend a long time writing and in the end he’ll write a good novel.
    3 . Where was Masha going yesterday when we saw her?
    I could hear their voices in the other room, the different pitches—when a woman was speaking and when a man was—the melody of assent, the appassionato of disputation, but I couldn’t make out the words. Outside, rain drummed impatient fingers against the window. I struggled, brain attempting to convert the English word into its Russian equivalent, hand to write the symbol that corresponded to the Russian sound, all the while feeling that maybe it was English I couldn’t understand. When I had got through about half the exercises, the French doors clattered open unexpectedly and Dieter said, “Let’s take five.” A man I didn’t know, tall and heavy with a head full of sloppy yellow curls, passed by the kitchen without looking in. One of his pant legs was rolled to his knee.
    Then Belinda appeared, the only person I’d ever met who made freckles seem glamorous. Without acknowledging me, she headed to the sink where she filled a glass with water and drank from it, her back turned, forcing me to be her audience. She was so dramatic I could see why Pete enjoyed being cast as her leading man, but I didn’t want to be in the play about her. Despite how enthusiastic she’d sounded when I was chosen for the house, in all our subsequent encounters her disdain for me was plain. I was finally starting to feel comfortable and knew she could easily ruin things for me by just a few calculated comments. The popular and beautiful have such powers.
    Belinda drank a glass of water three feet away from me and, when she finished, she set it on the counter with an attention-getting rap, turned, and swept over, saying, “Hmm. I wonder what Jane studies? Accounting, I bet.”
    Instinctively, I covered the page—too late. She hovered above me, hair grazing the table. “Is that Russian?” she asked, dropping the stage voice.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou’re studying Russian ?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSay something.”
    Of course I couldn’t. The stones stuck. I tried to read what I’d written, but I hadn’t worked out the pronunciation yet. Then out of my mouth came one of the sentences I’d translated. “ Tovarishch Popov govorit, chto on poluchil pismo. ”
    Dieter bellowed for everyone to gather, and Belinda, first hesitating, blinking at me with new respect, swished out again. “Jane knows Russian,” she said to the blond man I’d seen a moment ago with the rolled pant leg who was coming back down the hall.
    â€œWho-who-who’s Jane?”
    â€œThe other housemate.”
    He looked in at me. His cheeks were round and pink, like a baby’s. I heard