Read The Bear: A Novel for Free Online Page B

but my legs got too long since I’m going to start grade one. Stick’s legs are still stumpy and his knees make me laugh. They are fat circles and they don’t knob out. They go straight into his legs. They tickle too and I use my hand to put a spider on his knee and make it walk around and Stick laughs.
    “Ta-wick-ally,” he says.
    That is a very Sticky thing to say. He can’t speak English like the rest of everybody but he uses his own secret language. Momma and Daddy and me know what the words mean like that’s tickle. When we meet a grown-up or we go to a party sometimes I have to tell people what Stick is saying because I speak the secret language and they don’t. When we were eating Popsicles with Mrs. Buchanan and Snoopy was shut inside so he wouldn’t lick Stick’s face Stick’s Popsicle dripped and then dropped. Mrs. Buchanan got a small bowl and put a new Popsicle inside the bowl so that Stick wouldn’t drop it again. He doesn’t touch Popsicles not even pink ones with his fingers because they are cold but he didn’t say that. He says “I wanna werk.”
    Mrs. Buchanan doesn’t know what a werk is and she thinks he was talking about Daddy going to work because he goes through the back gate to get his car. Stick doesn’t remember going to his office so he thinks that Daddy goes and hides behind the gate all day. When Stick wants to see Daddy in the day he opens the back door and calls him. Then he thinks that Daddy stops hiding in the bushes at the end of the day and comes through the back door again. Mrs. Buchanan knows that joke so when Stick asked for a werk she thought he was talking about Daddy coming home and she said that he wouldn’t for another hour or two because it was still the afternoon. I speak Stick and I know that werk is kind of like “fork” and he calls everything he eats with a werk. He doesn’t say “spoon” ever.
    And “copcorn” means Stick wants popcorn and anyone could guess that. When his socks are on and he wants them off and he always does in the summer, he says “My knees are stuck.” That means help get my socks off and ankles and knees are mixed up. He asks for “cupper” and my momma always thinks he is asking to get in the cupboard to get a cookie but it is really supper. Momma figured it before I told her but it went on for days and days and I worried that Stick might get a cookie and I wouldn’t so I hid behind the counter and waited to see. There are a lot more words that I know and other people don’t. Mrs. Buchanan doesn’t speak Stick and I do and so I know all that but I felt tired to explain and if I did I couldn’t eat my Popsicle and I had to quick because it was summer and my Popsicle was melting. Purple and with two sticks. I got both sticks and didn’t have to split because Mrs. Buchanan says I say thank you.
    “Want to go on a boat ride?” I ask Sticky.
    He looks at me and nods and he says “Momma.”
    “Come on,” I say.
    But he doesn’t move. He sits on Momma’s sleeping bag getting his old poop on it and he will get in trouble for that so I pretend I don’t see because the trouble gets me too.
    I want Momma. I stand up and I look over and I see her foot sitting in the plants and I don’t want to go for a canoe ride even though that means I am big if I am allowed to go.
    “Don’t wanna,” says Stick.
    I stamp my bare foot and the needles don’t like it. They prick me back on my little toe. My feet are standing in the mess and I don’t like it. I want to make it not a mess but there is too many things to know what to do with everything. I look around and feel mad and I see a red bag. It has a big white cross on it and I know that is the Band-Aids. I am not allowed a Band-Aid unless there is blood and neither is Stick. Momma had blood and she needs a Band-Aid so I open the red bag and inside is a plastic bag that is hard to get open. I do a rip in it. That is bad because water can get in if the canoe gets tipped over. The bag