Read Online Whatever by Ann Walsh - Free Book Online Page B

and marched across the playground without looking back.
    â€œAndrew? Do you want Darrah to come with you?” Mom shouted at his back. He turned around briefly and called, “No, I can do this.” Next thing I knew, he was on top of the monkey bars, hanging upside down. Two little girls were staring up at him with silly looks on their faces. He wasn’t crying.
    Now he’s in grade five, plays soccer, wins ribbons at sports days and is always covered with bruises and cuts because he throws himself completely into whatever game he is playing. But I’m almost positive he hasn’t cried since his first day of school.
    Tonight he was crying. I stood outside his bedroom door and listened. The sound was faint, muffled, as if he were sobbing into a pillow, but he was definitely crying.
    â€œTalk to him, Darrah,” pleaded Mom. “Find out what’s wrong. Every time I ask him he says, ‘Nothing.’ I told him we had pizza for dinner and he said he wasn’t hungry. See if you can find out what’s going on.”
    I didn’t think Andrew would talk to me about why he was crying; we’re not exactly close. He leads his life and I lead mine; the five and a half years between us separate our livesso much that they don’t intersect very often. Our parents make me go to his soccer games if he’s in a tournament and insist that he comes to see any play I’m in, but we don’t “talk.”
    I looked behind me. Mom stood at the foot of the stairs, making “go on” gestures with her hands. I knocked on his door. “Andrew?”
    No answer.
    â€œCan I come in?”
    No answer, but the sobs grew quieter.
    â€œPlease, tell us what’s wrong.”
    â€œGo away, Dar.”
    â€œAndrew? Remember your first day of kindergarten? How scared you were? Remember I came with you and the next day you weren’t scared anymore?”
    â€œYou just wanted a happy face cupcake,” he said.
    â€œThat’s right, I got a cupcake at snack time, too. Mine was blue and pink. Yours was green with a big white smile.”
    Silence. Then a grudging, “Okay, come in.”
    Andrew was huddled on his bed, clutching a damp pillow. He wiped his nose on his sleeve, then tried to grin. There was a bandage on his forehead and he looked almost as white as it was. “No cupcakes here, Dar. Just the zombie.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I sat down on the bed beside him.
    â€œToday, while the ambulance guys were wheeling me out of the school, I woke up. The blood was running down in my eyes and they were holding something on my head to catch the blood and Mom was there and she was saying . . .”
    â€œâ€˜Oh, Andrew, oh, Andrew, oh, Andrew?’”
    â€œHow did you guess?” He almost grinned.
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œAll the kids were in the hallways and on the steps outside because it was lunch hour, and they watched the ambulance people take me away. I kept saying I could walk, please let me walk, but the first-aid people kept pushing me on that wheeled stretcher and wouldn’t let me. This one grade seven guy, he’s hanging over the stairs and he says, ‘It’s zombie time again.’ Then he goes cross-eyed and sticks out his tongue and everyone laughed.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œThey call me ‘Seizure Salad.’ I hate that name.”
    â€œOh.” I wasn’t doing well in the talking department; I didn’t know what to say.
    â€œDarrah?”
    â€œWhen I have a seizure, what happens?”
    â€œUh . . .” I wasn’t too sure myself. “There’s some broken connection in your brain and . . .”
    â€œI don’t want medical stuff. I mean, what do I do? When I wake up I can’t remember anything, there’s this blank, like time got swallowed up in a black hole. What do I do when it happens?”
    â€œIt’s not much to look at.”
    â€œLiar. There’s a