Summer Snow by Nicole Baart

Author:Nicole Baart
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: book, book
ISBN: 9781414329215
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2011-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

Secrets

“‘HI. I’M EMILY ELIZABETH and this is my dog, Clifford.’”

I could see by the way Simon’s eyes brushed over the pictures that he wasn’t reading at all, wasn’t even looking at the words. “Hey,” I said. “You have that line memorized.”

Simon glanced up at me with a look of disdain. “All the Clifford books start that way. I don’t have to read the first page.”

“But I don’t care if they all start that way or not, Simon. I want you to be able to read the words.”

He snorted as if taking great offense and turned the page with a sharp toss of his fingers. “Just watch,” he asserted. “I know how to read the whole book.”

Though it was true that there were certain words Simon always got right—Clifford, dog, the, and, to—the list of vocabulary that he could routinely recognize was actually still very small. During our morning sessions there were a few words that we could sound out together, but most of them I had to flat out tell him. I doubted if we were making any progress, and I could see his frustration beginning to show as we plodded through book after book.

We had barely turned the page when Simon came across emergency long and baffling, and he didn’t even try to tackle it. He shrugged a little self-consciously and skipped right over it, probably hoping that I wasn’t following along and wouldn’t notice.

“Emergency,” I said, stopping him. I pulled apart each syllable and moved my index finger under the word as I carefully repeated it. “E-mer-gen-cy.”

When Simon didn’t parrot me, I wrapped an arm around his dark head and gave his hair a quick kiss. It smelled sweet, like he had touched his messy mane with syrupy fingers. We had feasted on waffles for breakfast yesterday. I smiled and breathed him in. “Sick of it?” I asked.

Simon flipped the book closed. “No, but why can’t we read my Clifford books?” he complained, scraping at the library sticker on the back cover of the book he held.

“Because you know them by heart,” I answered. “I thought you wanted to learn how to read.” Then, flicking his fingers lightly, I added, “Don’t do that. You’re going to pull it off.”

He sighed and wrinkled his nose at me, abandoning the book and instead scratching a spot near his temple with ferocious energy. “I do, but it’s very hard. I don’t know lots of words yet. How many words are there, Julia?”

I laughed, dumbfounded at his question. “I have no idea. Lots and lots. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands, I suppose. Maybe millions.”

Simon’s face crumpled at such an unachievable number.

I rushed to soothe him. “Oh, don’t worry, Simon. You don’t have to know them all.”

“Do you know them all?”

“Absolutely not. I have a terrible vocabulary.”

“Vocabulary?”

I narrowed my eyes at him good-naturedly. “You know the word pregnant, but you don’t know vocabulary?”

My half brother shook his head solemnly and dropped the book on the floor so he could fold his legs underneath him and face me on the couch.

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