Education of Ellie by Jackie Calhoun

Author:Jackie Calhoun
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781594930928
Publisher: Bella Books
Published: 2007-05-10T05:00:00+00:00

XVIII

In the spring, Joey made friends with Janice’s younger sister Nancy who became a fixture in Ellie and Joey’s bedroom and house. Nancy and Joey skated up and down the block together.

Joey no longer tagged after Ellie.

“Nancy’s trash,” Ellie reminded her one night in bed.

“She’s not,” Joey said fiercely. “She’s my best friend.”

Understanding what a best friend was, she said no more.

The school year ended in early June. Helen barely passed and Nancy was held back. Nancy and Joey would be in the same grade in the fall. Ellie moved up to Miss Buxton’s sixth-grade class. Miss Albertson said she’d miss her. Richard winked and said he’d see her in Bugsie’s room.

The first week after school, she went upstairs to retrieve the gum she’d stuck to the rung of her bed the night before. She’d forgotten the attacks that kept Joey up all night, the medicine that caused her to heave up everything she ate and drank. So she was 126

All content of this eBook is copyrighted.

startled to see her sitting on the edge of her bed, staring straight ahead, struggling to breathe.

Reluctant to ask, because acknowledging Joey’s condition would make it real, she said, “Did you use your atomizer?”

Joey nodded, the look on her face a mix of despair and resigna-tion as if she too had thought maybe the asthma was gone.

She turned and took the stairs two at a time to the living room where Helen waited. “Joey’s sick,” she told her, picking up the phone to call her mother.

“You can spend the night at my house,” Helen said.

She shook her head.

“Maybe I can spend the night at your house,” Helen suggested.

She hung up after Mom said she was on her way home. “Think your dad would let you?”

“I’ll ask my mom.”

“But not unless Joey goes to the hospital,” she said. “When Joey’s sick, Mom sleeps in our room.”

When Mom came home, Ellie and Helen left for their bike ride. There was no enjoyment in it for her, though. They rode to the junior high, which was attached to the high school. At two thirty they started for home, knowing Helen’s father would be doing the same.

She climbed the stairs to her bedroom, hoping to find Joey miraculously well but of course, she wasn’t. She and Mom were sitting side by side on her sister’s bed. Joey’s eyes had that hollowed out, anxious look they got when she couldn’t breathe.

“The doctor’s on his way,” Mom said.

A summery breeze swept in one window and out the other.

Ellie thought she smelled the new crop of weeds in the garden.

Sitting on her bed, she waited with them for the doctor.

Her parents took Joey to the hospital during the night. Mom leaned over her and whispered her name. She told her they would lock the door and she was to stay inside till one of them returned.

No one suggested she go to Helen’s.

When she woke in the morning, Dad was home getting ready for work.

127

All content of this eBook is copyrighted.

“How’s Joey, Dad?” she asked as he ate a bowl of Wheaties.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.