The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [1]
Stupid had been missing since Jed ran away from home. Back in the fall. I was surprised to see the old furball, but that wasn’t the strange part either. Pa had never allowed the cat inside the house. He came and went as he pleased, sometimes disappearing for weeks or months. But this time Stupid had reappeared inside the henhouse. Inside?! That was strange.
Unless . . . did this mean Jed had returned? Excitedly I ran out to the miniature stone castle in our backyard and flung open the door, calling Jed’s name. But his room remained as he’d left it six months ago: neatly made bed without him in it, neat piles of books on the floor making a shelf for his neat piles of clothes, guitar under the bed, space heater under the single window. A dozen cuckoo birds stared forlornly from the collection of clocks covering the walls, their weights resting on the floor with nobody to reset them every eight days.
Just then Ma’s clunker SUV chirruped outside. She left real early for work at the dress factory in Exton. That’s why her chickens were my chores now. Jed used to take care of them.
Suddenly I remembered something. Ma was supposed to sign my homework! I started running down the driveway waving my arms behind the car, but then I ran back to the henhouse before she saw me. Because I suddenly remembered something else. I’d actually sort of forgotten to do my homework. Which happens a lot. Which is the reason Ms. Byron asked me yesterday to get it signed. Ms. Byron was going to have my wild rumpus in detention if I went to school without that math again.
For about the gazillionth time I wished Jed hadn’t run away. Jed used to help me with homework.
As I tossed feed to Barney the rooster and his harem, I planned a desperate plea to my grandmother. Grum just had to let me stay home from school, because . . . because I was the victim of a mysterious debilitating illness! Hadn’t I grown thin lately even though I ate everything Ma served, no matter how overcooked or underdelicious? Now that I thought about it, I ached all over. My stomach ached, my head ached, my insides ached teeth to toes. Little twitching pains crawled sincerely all along my skeletal system.
I screamed in horror, collapsed and rolled in agony on the straw, then lost consciousness as the ambulance sirens approached. I awoke alone in a hospital bed, my lungs grabbing desperately for air. With possibly my last breath in this life, I croaked, “Nurse!”
The nurse came flying in, crying, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”
Whoops. There went my brain making things up. Again. Barney was flapping his wings at me while I reached under a chicken for an egg. And that was when I noticed the second strange thing in the henhouse that morning.
The bird didn’t move. It sat very still like Grum in church, only its eyes followed my hand as I stole its baby. This was not very henlike. In fact, so not henlike that it creeped me out, and the egg fell out of my hand in shock. My shock, I mean. I dove to catch it before it went SPLAT! but only caught the floor with my face.
Instead of going SPLAT! like a decent egg should, the freak went BUMP! and wobbled off like it was hard-boiled. Okay, was my unique brain imagining things again? Always a concern. I smacked myself in the head to check. My head hurt, and when I kicked the egg it didn’t crack. This was real.
Not good. Every penny counted around our place, and the first things to go when the egg dollars didn’t come in were the fun things. Like Saturday roller skating at the Skate Away.
This situation wasn’t natural. It needed attention. With the hard egg in hand, I ran to the house and jumpkicked the door open. The door didn’t like to open unless you gave it a good kick or yank, depending on which side you were on. Just one of the many warps in our house A.O.—After Odum Research Corporation