The Midnight Children by Dan Gemeinhart

Author:Dan Gemeinhart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

In Which Things Are Shared, and Music Is Heard

After Benjamin’s vomit was cleaned up, it was time for lunch. And lunch at the Ragabonds, Ravani learned, was a predictably chaotic affair.

“You can pour the milk,” Colt told Ravani, handing him a bottle from the fridge. “No one gets to eat if they don’t help.”

The kitchen was a flurry of voices, elbows, and jostling bodies as the Deerings bustled, each doing their part. Annabel wiped the table with a wet rag; Benjamin got the bread and peanut butter out of the cupboard; Virginia stretched to get plates and handed them to Winnie; Beth started spreading peanut butter on the bread; Colt put eight plastic cups on the table. Ravani followed behind to add milk to each one.

Colt saw him fill the first cup generously. “Just a bit,” he murmured, and then picked up the cup and poured it out into the next three so that each had just an inch of milk at the bottom. Ravani remembered what Tristan had said the night they’d shared the secret with Ravani: with so many mouths to feed, we never have much.

“Right,” Ravani mumbled back. “Sorry.”

When the preparations were done, though, the Ragabonds didn’t sit down. They each took an empty plate and then circled around the sandwiches stacked on the table. Virginia made a spot for Ravani.

“Who will be the hungry?” Beth asked.

There was a pause, and then Annabel’s small voice spoke up.

“I will.”

Beth nodded at her.

All the others reached in and took a sandwich. Everyone except for Annabel and Ravani. He stood, uncertain. There was only one sandwich left. Virginia nudged him and nodded. “Take it,” she said. Ravani looked at Annabel, who smiled and nodded, so he leaned in and took it.

“Who will share with the hungry?” Beth asked.

All the Ragabonds answered as one. “I will.”

Annabel slid her empty plate into the middle of the table. One by one, all the other Ragabonds tore a piece off their own sandwich. And they put it on Annabel’s plate. Ravani was the last one, but he added to her plate, too. After he did, Annabel’s plate was full. She grinned around the circle.

“Thank you,” she said, and everyone answered, “What’s ours is yours.”

Ravani didn’t have to ask what it all meant. He knew it was part of their magic, part of that web the Ragabonds wove around themselves and between one another to stay safe, and to stay together.

And he was woven in now, too. It felt good, to be a part of something.

“Eat up!” Beth announced, and then in ones and twos the Ragabonds wandered off. Benjamin and Winnie ambled away toward the front porch, Annabel and Beth walked out to the dining room, and then it was just Ravani and Virginia and Colt standing in the kitchen alone.

Ravani looked at the torn edge of his sandwich. There was just a thin stripe of peanut butter between the slices of bread.

“Do you have any jelly?” he asked before thinking. He regretted it instantly.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.