This is the Part Where You Laugh by Peter Brown Hoffmeister

Author:Peter Brown Hoffmeister
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2016-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

ALL THE WAY HOME

The bike home is brutal. Normally I can do it in under 20 minutes, but it takes me a full 45. Natalie keeps slowing down and riding next to me even when that means she’s riding in the street instead of the bike lane. Cars honk as they drive around her. She flips them off.

When we get to the skate park, I say, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“No,” she says, “I’m biking you all the way home.”

The Vicodin is kicking in and I’m starting to feel hazy. “I’m okay. Really.”

“All the way home,” she says. “And that’s final.”

We bike up Crescent Avenue to Green Acres. I slow one more time at the entrance to the trailer park. “I’m good now. Really.”

“Just tell me,” Natalie says. “Which way from here?”

I call the park a trailer park, but there aren’t that many trailers. Most of the houses are single-wides or double-wides, manufactured homes, a little better than trailers, but still not well built, not nice houses. As we ride past the first few, I’m hoping Natalie doesn’t notice the plastic porch railings and Astroturf lawns, the pressboard siding and carpeted porches, the prefab slide-and-lock picket fences, yard gnomes, windmills, and pink flamingos stuck into the fake grass. I think of Natalie’s white-carpeted stairs, her hardwood floors, her clean front porch.

She says, “Which one is your house?”

“A little farther.”

When we get to my grandparents’, I see how ugly the mini Tuff Shed is, with its peeled red paint and a big dent on the driveway side. On the porch, there are fake flowers in metal stands on the railing. I say, “My grandparents have a thing for fake flowers.”

Natalie laughs. “They’re cute.”

We park our bikes on the side of the house and go to the front door. Walk inside. Grandpa’s watching baseball. He looks up and clears his throat. Stands quickly. “Well, uh, hello, young lady.”

“Hi.” Natalie smiles at him.

“My name’s Roy.” He holds out his hand.

“Natalie.”

“Please sit down.” He points to the recliner.

“Okay. Thanks.”

I look around the room and notice how cluttered it is. Junk mail sliding off the desktop in the corner. Magazines, dirty plates, and milk-crusted drinking glasses on the coffee table. Laundry in a pile at one end of the couch. I walk over and start to pick it up, forgetting about my ribs. I groan and stop.

“Hey,” Natalie says, “let me do that.”

Grandpa looks confused. “No, no, he can…”

“Seriously, I’ve got it.” Natalie takes the laundry from me. Turns to my grandpa. “Where do I put this?”

Grandpa goes to get a basket. Brings one back and she dumps the laundry in. Grandpa takes it to my room and comes right back. He points at me. “What’s wrong with you? She’s a guest.”

Natalie says, “He cracked four ribs. Fractured them.”

Grandpa adjusts his glasses. “How?”

“He hit the water wrong when we jumped in the river.”

“Must have been a big jump.” Grandpa shakes his head. He points to the chair and the couch, and Natalie sits down again. I have to sit slowly, leaning on my good arm first and lowering my body into a sitting position.

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