The Half-Orphan's Handbook by Joan F. Smith

Author:Joan F. Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Imprint

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The card games, the banter, the snacks, and the sex talk. That evening, after the storm quieted but its heaviness still clung to the air, I couldn’t help but compare my afternoon to every one I’d spent with Josie and Rose, dissecting sex stuff. Positions. People. It was different with them, though, because we knew all the same people, and we also knew what the others had worn to eighth-grade graduation. Ever since my father’s death, there had been this Great Divide, an impenetrable wall between us.

But not here. Not with Winnie and Madison. With them, I could just be. Every conversation didn’t come with a pallbearer. Instead we were just three teenage girls, talking about sex and love over snacks, brought together by something—death—that by definition had happened to someone else, the aftereffects of which we were left to learn how to live with.

I rolled off my bunk, thinking there was maybe some kind of rule I could draft about relating to others in the same stage of life. When I pulled out the notebook, its edge caught on the zipper of my duffel bag. It flipped open, landing with the back cover exposed, revealing something I’d never noticed before.

A pocket.

With the curled edge of a piece of paper protruding from it.

My heart drummed in my chest. The paper took some prying to remove. The pocket was incredibly tight, almost flush to the back cover. Easy to miss. Apparently.

Finally, the paper slid loose. I unfolded it, working hard to steady my trembling hand so I could make out what was on the page. Phrases were scrawled in my father’s slanted, microscopic writing, so different from my mother’s and yet equally as recognizable.

Bot. line = what public picks, not nec. winner.

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