My Cousin's Keeper Read Free Page A

steady breathing.
    â€œYou caught up,” he said warmly. “Well done.”
    I smiled. The run home would be easy.

When Mom was in a daydreaming mood, she’d talk about moving to the coast. It made me wonder what it would be like to be the new kid at school. How would it be to arrive on the playground at a new school and know absolutely nobody, or to step into a classroom and have twenty-five kids stare at me as though I were a museum exhibit? I had always lived in this town and gone to the one school, and I felt a little sorry for the new kids who arrived from time to time.
    Some of them fit in and made new friends right away. Some of them looked shy and lost for days after they’d arrived; they sat alone on playground seats, or walked anxiously beside any friendly teacher that happened to be on playground duty.
    I remembered one new kid who had arrived at our school, an older boy who brought his anger with him every day. For a while, he turned the playground into a battlefield, fighting other kids and being rude to the teachers. Everybody learned his name very quickly, and a gang of kids began to follow him around — which caused even more trouble. But as suddenly as he’d arrived, the boy left our school and moved on to some other place. Everyone felt relieved, and things on the playground got back to normal again.
    New kids often appeared after a school break, and that was how it happened in the fall of the year I turned eleven. By the end of that first morning back at school, I knew I’d remember the date and year, because of precisely
who
the new kids were.
    I saw her first, long before Mason Cutler or Lucas Xerri or any of the other boys in my class began the familiar routine of making comments loud enough for the new girl to hear once she was on the playground.
    â€œWoo, she’s a honey,” remarked Lucas.
    â€œGo on, big man,” said Mason. “Go and ask her out!”
    â€œYou know where she lives?”
    â€œNever seen her before. Go and ask her name.”
    â€œNo way. You go!”
    But I saw her first.
    Because Gina had managed to lose not one but two school sweaters, I was rummaging through the lost and found in between the main front door and the school office. Gina had forgotten exactly where she’d left her things, and Mom had told me to go looking. The school office before class time began was always a busy place — parents dropping off notes or paying for schoolbooks or field trips, kids coming in from the playground with bleeding knees or elbows that required either a Band-Aid or a phone call home. And big brothers like me searching the lost and found for things that annoying little sisters managed to lose. Most of the usual commotion I ignored, but the front door opening and the sound of strangers’ voices distracted me from my search.
    They arrived in a rush, and it seemed that a private conversation hadn’t quite been finished, because the mom was whispering something to the new girl, who looked annoyed and embarrassed. The two of them went to the reception desk, and I heard Mrs. Reilly, who ran the office, ask, “Yes, how can I help you?”
    It was the girl who began to answer first. “I’d like to enroll, please —”
    Her mom interrupted her. “I’d like to enroll my daughter, please.”
    I stopped rummaging and turned around. The girl had spoken as though she could hardly wait to be in a classroom full of kids she’d never met. The mom had sounded as if this were the very last place she wanted to be, and the sunglasses she wore didn’t exactly make her look friendly. I realized that I was probably staring and went back to my clothing search, as the mom and girl sat down on the seats beside the front door. I could hear paper being rustled and the busy scratching of a pen on a page. I heard the mom say in a whispered hiss, “I’m
not
happy about this.”
    â€œWell, I am,” the