Slap Your Sides
Chapter One
I was thirteen the winter everything changed. I knew, even on the cold December night Bud left, that our family would never be the same again. Everyone was at the dinner table: Bud, me, Mom, Dad, my other brother, Tommy, and Hope Hart, from the next town over, Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
No one was saying anything except what began with Please pass the . . . I hated the way no one would talk about it, but not enough to mention it myself. Someone had left the radio on in the living room. We could hear Radio Dan signing off. He was a number-one cornball, but I listened to him sometimes, secretly. He was the only celebrity I had a personal acquaintance with, despite the fact that he wasn't always sure which Shoemaker kid I was. He lived down at the end of our street. He had this deep, friendly voice. You'd think he'd understand anything you told him. But I knew better. He wouldn't understand what Bud was doing, that was for sure.
My father got up, went in, and turned him off. He hardly ever listened to the radio anymore. Everything was about the war.
A rib roast, Bud's favorite, was being slowly eaten in silence. Even Mahatma ... read full excerpt from: Slap Your Sides ebook
