The Ideal Wife by Annie Ward

Author:Annie Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2019-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Maddie

Twelve days before

I didn’t feel like writing during my last session with Cami J, and she let me get away with it. Sort of. She did give me a homework assignment. She wants me to write about a time when I got mad.

Oh boy.

Where to start? Our cable service. Health insurance. There’s that little boy Blake who picks on Charlie at Kids Club. The teenagers who drive through our neighborhood at breakneck speed. The news. Politicians. People who hurt animals. Ian. Ian has made me mad many times. Probably the worst was when he stood me up in Bosnia. I remember being furious.

No, that was not the worst. I remember now.

Homework for Dr. Camilla Jones

A Time When I Was Very Angry

By Madeline Wilson

We were playing.

That’s how the story starts. That’s what I remember. We were playing. Charlie and me. I can’t even remember where Ian was. Kazakhstan? South Korea? Honestly I have no idea. Maybe he wasn’t even gone. Maybe he was in the basement and we hadn’t seen him in a while.

I was chasing Charlie. I was saying, “I’m going to get you!”

He was laughing and running and I was a little worried because he kept looking back at me over his shoulder and I was afraid he was going to bump into the wall or something and hurt himself. I said, “That’s enough, Charlie. Let’s just calm down for a little bit. Come and let me cut you up an apple.”

But he didn’t calm down. He went running up the stairs, still making that funny heavy breathing noise he makes when he’s excited and having fun.

He wanted to be chased. He didn’t want the game to end. I crept over into the foyer and I could see his legs reflected in the mirror at the top of the stairs. He was waiting for me, standing at the railing at the top, watching.

I started up the staircase after him. I said, “I’m coming for you!”

He giggled and took off.

When I reached the top of the staircase, he jumped out at the other end. He had his gun.

“Oh no!” I yelled, throwing my hands in the air. “Don’t shoot me!”

But he shot me anyway. His Nerf dart hit me in the arm.

“Oww!” I cried and fell to the floor. “You killed me! I’m dead.”

Charlie walked down the length of the hallway with his gun hanging at his side, looking quite a bit like a small bounty hunter. He looked at me lying there holding my arm and he wasn’t laughing. He was thinking about something. “You’re not dead,” he said. “I didn’t get you in the X.”

I sat up. “What’s the X?”

He drew an X across his torso, from shoulder to opposite hip and then again on the other side. “This is the X. You only win if you hit the X.”

I looked him in the eyes. “Who told you that?”

“Daddy,” he answered.

“When?” I asked.

“When he was showing me how to shoot properly.”

“I didn’t know Daddy showed you how to shoot.

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