Summer Night The summer night--like most this time of year--was humid and so we left the windows open to let the warm, damp breeze waft in. The screens kept most of the nasty little bugs out, but every now and then one gets in and we scream for Dad to come and kill it for us. Allison, my little sister, and I share a room in our tiny little house located on 12304 Bishop Court. Our town is small and quaint, with a bunch of white houses lined up like dominoes along the streets. We aren’t very rich; we get new clothes about once a year, near Christmas. We make do with what we have. We can’t afford a ton of fancy things like brand new cellphones and computers; we have one home computer and Dad has a laptop for work. We’re not allowed to use it. Mom and Dad both have cell phones, but not those Apple ones. They’re smaller and open and close like a clam shell. Even though we don’t have fancy technology or money to go out to movies and stuff, Alli and I still have fun. We play outside after school, watch TV on rainy days, and read. We read a lot, actually. We practically live at the library. My favorite books are mysteries. I like the suspense. I always open the book to the very last page and read the last sentence before I actually read the book. I don’t know why, but I do. It’s an odd habit of mine. Alli, on the other hand, likes adventure and fantasy books. The only way Alli likes to read is to lay down and place her legs up against a nearby wall so she makes an L with her body. It’s fun to watch her do that in the library and see all the other people get super confused. Sometimes, the cranky old librarian, Mrs. Wells, will come over and scold us for bothering the other readers. Tonight, like most nights, we were in bed reading. And by ‘in bed,’ I mean ‘pillow fort’. At night, Alli has to take off her glasses and so I read to her aloud. She lay on her back, her legs sticking up into the air as she listened to James and the Giant Peach. We’ve mastered the art of being quiet. We’ve been caught by Dad many times before. We’d hear his light
Pillars of Salt 9
