Surviving the Applewhites Read Free Page B

with yours,” Zedediah had said. And that had been that.
    E.D. thought of the fat three-ring binder that held her curriculum for the first half of this year. It gave her life order. Stability. Predictability. It had taken her a whole week in August to plan it out. There were sections for each subject, and for each one she had written down her goals and listed every project she planned to do to meet those goals. Then she’d made charts and time lines with squares to check off each step as it was completed. So far, she was right on schedule. If she had to catch Jake Semple up on what she had done in each subject so far, it would throw everything into chaos.
    Winston was awake now, lying with his stubby front paws on each side of the cereal bowl, lapping up milk and leaking foamy saliva on E.D.’s sneakers and his own ears. E.D. sighed. She loathed and despised chaos.

Chapter Four
    W hen Jake and his grandfather drove in that morning, Lucille Applewhite, wearing capri pants and a billowy blue-and-green flowered shirt, her hair clamped on top of her head and spilling curls in every direction, hurried from the end cottage to greet them. She stood by the truck and burbled on and on to his grandfather about how glad they were to have Jake joining them and how sure she was that they could provide him with just the environment he needed. Jake climbed down from the truck scowlinghis most ferocious scowl, but she only smiled. Even his silver-spiked black leather collar and his Vampire Zombies from the Beyond T-shirt with the skull and fangs that dripped bright red blood didn’t faze her. After a while, when she didn’t seem to be running down, his grandfather said he’d better be going, told Jake to behave himself, and drove hurriedly away, spitting gravel and leaving Jake standing next to the duffel bag that held everything he’d brought from Rhode Island with him.
    This grandfather he’d only met a few weeks ago couldn’t wait to be rid of him, Jake thought. The old man was no match for the likes of Jake Semple.
    “Let’s get you settled in your room,” Lucille said. “And then I’ll give you the grand tour.”
    Jake picked up his bag, but she didn’t move. She just stood looking at him, her hands on her hips, her head to one side. Jake intensified his scowl. The combination of this particular expression and this T-shirt, even without the spiked leather collar, had totally unnerved the principal at Traybridge Middle School.
    Lucille sighed a long, appreciative sigh. “A radiant light being, that’s what you are. A radiant light being!”
    Jake very nearly dropped his duffel bag. Radiant light being!
    “And don’t ever let anyone tell you different.”
    There were plenty of people who’d be happy to tell him different, he thought. He tried to imagine hissocial worker back in Rhode Island calling him a radiant light being. She had never called him anything, he thought. Not even his name. Mostly whenever she had to deal with him she just sighed a lot and shook her head. This poet woman must be seriously crazy. The sooner he got out of here, the better.
    She turned and started back toward the end cottage. “You’ll be bunking with Archie and me in our extra bedroom. I hope you won’t mind how small your room is. Think of it as cozy. I really think it’ll be perfect for you. It was my meditation room till we found out you were joining us. I called it my zen cave. We brought in a bed and a dresser, of course, and it’s all been…” Jake had no idea what her next words meant. Fung schwayed, it sounded like. “So the energy flow is excellent. You’ll find it wonderfully centering.”
    The cottage, like all the others spaced out in a semicircle to the left of the big house, was a silvery gray structure backed up against the woods. Its narrow porch was covered with vines, some of them so thick and powerful looking that they seemed to be in the process of pulling it down altogether. “We call this Wisteria Cottage.