Miss Someday_A Young Adult Novel by R. J. Ryker

Author:R. J. Ryker [Ryker, R. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-11-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

It’s early Saturday morning, my first day assisting Carrie with the church food bank—my payback for Carrie helping me with Mac’s fundraiser. It’s unusually hot for March, almost seventy degrees. A breeze makes it a bit cooler, but the sky is as cloudless as a summer afternoon.

I expect a line of people waiting for food, but when I arrive it’s only me and Carrie. I just want to make it through the morning without another argument. Keeping Carrie happy means she’ll be less likely to kick me out of the house before I convince Thomas to help with school. It also means she won’t give up on Mac’s fundraiser.

Carrie takes me out into a warehouse behind the church.

There are oversized cardboard containers filled with an assortment of canned and boxed food. It’s a disorganized mess.

“We have to sort the cans into boxes,” she says.

“You do this by yourself?” I ask.

“Two of my helpers are on a mission trip. Another called in sick.”

“And you do this every week.”

“And Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.”

That’s a lot of time spent helping other people. I still can’t figure out who Carrie is. She’s an artist and, at least in my book, being the creative person I am, that’s a good thing. She spends her free time helping people who have less than her. But sometimes she’s just plain mean. I don’t get it.

I could blame her dislike of me on the ripped picture. But Carrie’s ill-will started long before that incident.

We spend two hours sorting through the boxes, and the next step is to fill grocery bags for the people that come to the food bank. Each bag has six cans of vegetables, a couple of boxes of hamburger helper, and other canned goods like chili or soup.

Growing up, waiting in line at the food bank was just part of life. There was a time when I thought all the kids at school got half their groceries from the nice people working out of the back door of the local church. By the time I was in junior high, though, I refused to go with my mom.

I wouldn’t be seen begging for food.

It didn’t matter that most people knew we were poor—our neighbors had it just as bad as us. But there was something about acknowledging that we were that poor.

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