Dreamland
Chapter One
When I was four and Cass was six, she whacked me across the face
with a plastic shovel at our neighborhood park. We were in the sandbox,
and it was winter: In the pictures, we're in matching coats and
hats and mittens. My mother loved to dress us alike, like twins, since
we were only two years apart. We did look alike, with the same round
face and dark eyes and the same brown hair. But we weren't the same,
even then.
The story goes like this: Cass had the shovel and I wanted it. My
mother was sitting watching us on a bench with Boo, who had her
camera and was snapping pictures. This was at Commons Park, the
small grassy area in the center of our neighborhood, Lakeview. Besides
the sandboxes it also had a swing set, one of those circular things you
push real fast and then jump on—a kind of manual merry-go-round—and
enough grass to play baseball or kickball. Cass and I
spent most of the afternoons of our childhood at Commons Park, but
the shovel incident is what we both always remembered.
Not that we ourselves recalle ... read full excerpt from: Dreamland (reissue) ebook
