The Enemy by Sara Holbrook

Author:Sara Holbrook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boyds Mills Press
Published: 2017-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

If Bernadette can be sick for a week, then I can be sick for a week. Maybe by then things will have calmed down between Inga and Bernadette. I just need to look sick enough that Mom will keep me home. I had scarlet fever in second grade and was out for two weeks, just to make sure the shot worked and I didn’t come down with rheumatic fever, which can ruin your heart.

I need a major illness, something that will keep me out of school for the rest of the year. Pauline Pothier was allowed to stay home for half a year in a body cast because she had curvature of the spine. I try standing crooked but don’t look that convincing. I’ve already had mumps, chicken pox, and hard measles, so those excuses are out the window.

I go into the bathroom and swirl the hottest water I can stand in my mouth and stick the thermometer in before going downstairs. Dad hasn’t left for work yet and is bent over the newspaper, sipping coffee. Mom’s nowhere in sight, which is not good. She’s easier to convince than Dad. Dad thinks if you want sympathy, you should look it up under S in the dictionary. But Dad doesn’t even seem to notice me standing there.

“Lila, look here at this story in the paper,” Dad says, pointing at a headline I can’t read upside down. Mom comes to the dining room door, a piece of black toast in her hand, smelling like smoke.

“Looks like there was a theft over at the library last weekend.”

Mom stands still. Frank pushes past her, holding a cup of coffee.

“Listen to this: ‘“This theft is a particularly heinous crime as these were books slated to be destroyed due to their anti-American content,” says Head Librarian Mrs. Harvey Pearson.’ Looks like more than a hundred books just disappeared. What do you think about that, Lila?” Dad looks up at Mom over his glasses.

“When was that?” asks Frank.

“They think it happened on Saturday,” Dad answers. “No leads yet. But the cops don’t always publish everything they know.”

“Saturday afternoon?” asks Frank.

“That’s what they’re thinking, ’cording to this article. Is this what the pinko Friends of the Library were cooking up last week, Lila? You know anything about this?”

Frank, who usually talks to no one in the mornings, seems all excited about the story. “Books just disappeared? Books don’t just walk off, somebody got to know what happened.”

I take the thermometer out of my mouth before I bite down without thinking and break the glass. Mom holds her pose in the kitchen doorway.

“You ’spose that’s a felony?” asks Frank. “I guess somebody might do some hard time over somethin’ like that. Stealing’s stealing.”

“Says here there’s going to be a thorough investigation,” Dad says.

“Somebody’s going to sing,” says Frank. “Always happens that way. One person sees their butt’s on the line and they can’t wait to snitch. Right Mrs. C.? Ain’t that the way it always goes?”

“Don’t say ain’t, Frank.

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