My Sister's Keeper Read Free Page A

disconnection.
“Bastard,” she mutters, and then seems to realize I'm standing three
feet away. “Can I help you?”
    She looks me over from head to toe, rating me on a general scale of first
impressions, and finding me severely lacking. I lift my chin and pretend to be
far more cool than I actually am. “I have an appointment with Mr.
Alexander. At four o'clock.”
    “Your voice,” she says. “On the phone, you didn't sound quite
so…”
    Young?
    She smiles uncomfortably. “We don't try juvenile cases, as a rule. If
you'd like I can offer you the names of some practicing attorneys who—”
    I take a deep breath. “Actually,” I interrupt, “you're wrong.
Smith v. Whately, Edmunds v. Womens and Infants Hospital, and Jerome v. the Diocese
of Providence all involved litigants under the age of eighteen. All three
resulted in verdicts for Mr. Alexander's clients. And those were just in the
past year.”
    The secretary blinks at me. Then a slow smile toasts her face, as if she's
decided she just might like me after all. “Come to think of it, why don't
you just wait in his office?” she suggests, and she stands up to show me
the way.
    Even if I spend every minute of the rest of my life reading, I do not
believe that I will ever manage to consume the sheer number of words routed
high and low on the walls of Campbell Alexander, Esquire's office. I do the
math—if there are 400 words or so on every page, and each of those legal books
are 400 pages, and there are twenty on a shelf and six shelves per
bookcase—why, you're pushing nineteen million words, and that's only partway
across the room.
    I'm alone in the office long enough to note that his desk is so neat, you
could play Chinese football on the blotter; that there is not a single photo of
a wife or a kid or even himself; and that in spite of the fact that the room is
spotless, there's a mug full of water sitting on the floor.
    I find myself making up explanations: it's a swimming pool for an army of
ants. It's some kind of primitive humidifier. It's a mirage.
    I've nearly convinced myself about that last one, and am leaning over to
touch it to see if it's real, when the door bursts open. I practically fall out
of my chair and that puts me eye to eye with an incoming German shepherd, which
spears me with a look and then marches over to the mug and starts to drink.
    Campbell Alexander comes in, too. He's got black hair and he's at least as
tall as my dad—six feet—with a right-angle jaw and eyes that look frozen over.
He shrugs out of a suit jacket and hangs it neatly on the back of the door,
then yanks a file out of a cabinet before moving to his desk. He never makes
eye contact with me, but he starts talking all the same. “I don't want any
Girl Scout cookies,” Campbell Alexander says. “Although you do get
Brownie points for tenacity. Ha.” He smiles at his own joke.
    “I'm not selling anything.”
    He glances at me curiously, then pushes a button on his phone.
“Kerri,” he says when the secretary answers. “What is this doing
in my office?”
    “I'm here to retain you,” I say.
    The lawyer releases the intercom button. “I don't think so.”
    “You don't even know if I have a case.”
    I take a step forward; so does the dog. For the first time I realize it's
wearing one of those vests with a red cross on it, like a St. Bernard that
might carry rum up a snowy mountain. I automatically reach out to pet him.
“Don't,” Alexander says. “Judge is a service dog.”
    My hand goes back to my side. “But you aren't blind.”
    “Thank you for pointing that out to me.”
    “So what's the matter with you?”
    The minute I say it, I want to take it back. Haven't I watched Kate field
this question from hundreds of rude people?
    “I have an iron lung,” Campbell Alexander says curtly, “and
the dog keeps me from getting too close to magnets. Now, if you'd do me the
exalted honor of leaving, my secretary can find you the name of