Read The Children for Free Online Page B

herself.”
    â€œWell?” Joan asked. “What was she like?”
    She looked from Everett to me and then back at Everett. He was grinning and shrugging, shoveling the pie into his mouth.
    â€œWe barely said hello, but she seems friendly. She’s coming back tomorrow,” I said.
    â€œHow strange that she just showed up like that,” Joan said.
    â€œI think people do that in Utah,” said Everett.
    â€œWhat?” Joan asked, laughing at him. “Utah? She’s from Sun Valley, which is in Idaho, Everett.”
    â€œOh,” he said. “Right.”
    â€œI’ve always been great at geography,” Joan added, taking one last bite of pie.

 
    FOUR
    I get paid to do a blog post every day. It doesn’t matter how long it is; I just have to post something so that the diaper people think they’re getting their money’s worth. I knew I wouldn’t have much time to blog over the next few days, so I explained that I was sick, that some sort of plague had nearly annihilated my family. First little Wyatt woke up with a fever. He’s always the first to catch any cold or virus, due to his compromised immune system. Then Mia caught his bug, and now Topher was rolling around on the couch, acting like he was dying. That was yesterday. Now everybody else was recovering and I was puking my brains out. I asked my blog readers if they knew the symptoms of Ebola. I was pretty sure that’s what I had, since I had consulted with WebMD. Within minutes of posting the entry, I had four comments. Two were from regular posters, two from people whose screen names I didn’t recognize. They each had amusing stories of how they had solved their own medical mysteries by using the Internet as their diagnostician.
    I posted a comment from Kate Madison. She told me she was going to drop off some soup at our house later. Kate is one of my sock puppets. When I started the blog and began accumulating a lot of followers, I worried that readers might become suspicious. I worried that they might want proof that I was who I said I was, proof that I actually was a suburban mom. So I created JennyPenny, MrMom, and Katemadison. These are my IRL people, the people I’m supposed to know in real life. Jenny and I went to college together. Mr. Mom and Kate have kids who go to school with Mia. They live in my town. They’re always careful to be discreet about where we live. We all want to protect the privacy of our children. The truth is, I never really needed to create them. Nobody has ever questioned the veracity of my blog. People tend to believe what you tell them.
    I was just finishing up when I heard a car crunching along the gravel driveway. It was Spin’s Jeep. I looked out the window and saw him and Laurel climb out of the car. Then I heard their steps on the porch.
    My attic room is above the porch. The porch roof blocked them from view, but I could hear their conversation as clearly as if we were in the same room. Spin did his customary three little knocks on the door and then I heard Laurel say, “You knock when you come here?”
    â€œYeah, usually. Why?” Spin asked.
    â€œI don’t know, isn’t it your house?” Laurel asked.
    â€œYeah, well, now that my dad’s gone, I just, you know, sometimes knock,” Spin said. “I don’t always knock.”
    And then I heard their footsteps in the house.
    â€œHello?” Spin called. “Anybody here?”
    I stood in the center of the hot attic room, my shadow pinned to the wall. Sometimes I’m stricken with dread. Panic attacks, Dr. Alter calls them.
    â€œHello?” said Spin.
    â€œYeah, hi, Spin. I’ll be down in a minute,” I called back finally. I tiptoed downstairs to the bathroom. I was wearing shorts and a tank top. I have wavy brownish hair that turns slightly blond in the summer. But it wasn’t quite summer yet; I wasn’t tan. My hair was a mess. I