Like Family by Paula McLain

Author:Paula McLain [MCLAIN, PAULA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316082662
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

ONE NIGHT, HOURS AFTER everyone had gone to bed, I woke up sick. I started crying, and Hilde came in asking what was wrong. “It feels like there are spiders in my stomach,” I said. I knew that sounded strange, but it did feel like that, like they were crawling around in there, a bunch of them. My sisters made fun of me for being so afraid of spiders, but the thing is, there were billions of them on our property, and not just in the garage: fat tarantulas sunned themselves on the concrete slab out back, daddy longlegs maneuvered along the tiles in the shower. Once, I found a big brown spider on the long curtains over the sliding glass door and knocked it into a jar with a pie plate. It was about the size of a silver dollar, and its back looked furry until I noticed the fur was really hundreds of little spiders stuck there, their bodies folded like gross tiny envelopes waiting to open. Sick. My plan was to suffocate all of them in the jar, so I found a lid, screwed it on and went into my room to do some homework. When I came out for dinner an hour or so later, the jar was gone. I panicked. Was the spider big enough to knock the jar off the counter and roll out the front door like a gerbil on a wheel? No, couldn’t be. But where was the jar?

Just then, Tina walked in from the living room and said, “Were you torturing that spider? Poor thing was gonna die in that jar, so I let it loose outside.”

It was free? And right outside? I was so pissed at Tina that I wouldn’t talk to her for the rest of the day, but the worst thing was lying in bed that night, thinking the mother spider was out there somewhere, plotting her revenge, rallying the other furry, gross spiders to help her chew through the screen and descend on me en masse.

Anyway, I was trying to explain to Hilde about the spider feeling in my stomach when I vomited, partly on the floor next to my bed, partly in the hall as I tried to make it to the bathroom. I stood there holding my barfy nightgown away from my body, and Hilde walked into the hall saying, “Ugh!” She shuttled past me into the kitchen and brought back a plastic bucket and sponge. “You’ll just have to clean this up,” she said. “I can’t do it.”

Hilde couldn’t abide throw-up. I didn’t know anyone who liked it, but Hilde got the shakes if she was within ten feet of barf, making little gagging noises like she was going to be sick too. I felt sorry for myself, there on my knees on the carpet, sponging up my own puke, which was spongy too, and pink. Samantha Fredrickson would never have made me do that, never. She had been a great sick-nurse. Soon after

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