My Name Is Not Easy by Edwardson, Dahl (the reading list TXT) 📗

at Sonny, like she fi gured Sonny’d be the one to do the teaching. Sonny nodded.

Th

e nuns had given them plates full of stringy meat,

mushy vegetables, and perfectly rounded scoops of potatoes with brown gravy poured on top, which made them look like ice cream sundaes, the kind you could buy at Dairy Queen in Fairbanks if you were rich. Th

e meat was okay, but the pota-

toes had no taste at all. Th

e gravy didn’t taste right, either. Like

someone had drained all the fat off .

“Swede never lets us eat fake potatoes,” Chickie announced loud enough for the whole place to hear. She wrinkled her nose for emphasis.

Donna didn’t say anything and neither did any of the others. Rose and Evelyn watched Chickie suspiciously from the sides of their eyes, and the Eskimos gave each other looks.

Chickie put her chin up high, looked right at Sonny, then grinned at all the Eskimos, even at the little one sitting off by himself.

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I N D I A N C O U N T R Y / S o n n y a n d C h i c k i e Fearless, Sonny thought. Dumb, but fearless. Where the heck did she come from?

“Hey, Junior. Come sit by us,” she called out, and the little kid with the big glasses picked up his tray, obediently, and moved over, shoving his glasses onto the bridge of his nose again and glancing around, like he was embarrassed to be singled out, embarrassed to move and embarrassed not to. All the Eskimo kids nodded at him and smiled like they all shared some private joke.

Th

is made Sonny nervous.

You don’t quiet down, them Eskimos gonna catch you when you go outside to pee and chop your head right off . Play kickball with it. Th

at’s what Sonny’s mom used to tell them when they

got too wild back home. And when you’re a little kid needing to pee and it’s dark outside, talk like that can scare the pee right out of you.

But when you’re a big kid at Sacred Heart School and you know your grandfather and his brothers used to kill Eskimo trespassers . . . well, that kind of talk just makes you tough.

And Sonny was plenty tough.

Now, Amiq was marching his Eskimo pawns right past

Sonny’s table—on the Indian side—acting like he owned the place. Evelyn glared. “Who say they gonna be here?” she muttered.

Amiq stopped dead in his tracks and turned around real slow. “We say,” he said, staring right at Evelyn. And smiling a great big smart-aleck smile. Like he was laughing at her.

Evelyn’s eyes got black as water under river ice. You didn’t 31

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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

have to know her to see she was not the kind of girl who let people laugh at her. “Yeah? So whatchu doin’ here?” she snapped.

Amiq just stood there, grinning down at her.

“Scouting,” he said, like he was some kind of cowboy or something.

Th

at word made Sonny’s chest tighten. Scouting.

If there’s gonna be any kickball around here, Sonny thought,

it’s not gonna be my head.

Amiq sauntered over to the heart of the Eskimo table, grinning down at Chickie as he passed and winking at Donna.

To Sonny’s surprise, Donna blushed.

Chickie shoved another forkful of gluey fake potatoes into her mouth. All of a sudden she was missing Swede really bad. When Swede had told her about going away to boarding school, he never said anything about fake potatoes, that’s for sure. Th

e only thing he said was that she was going

to a place called Sacred Heart School and she couldn’t bring her hula hoop. He’d looked right square at the hoop and said it, too: “You can’t take it with you, Chickie. Sorry, girl.”

But that was okay by Chickie because you can’t go

anywhere on a hula hoop and Chickie had known forever that the one thing she wanted to do in life was to see what it’s like to live in a place where the roads don’t quit rolling at the end of town.

Th

at hula hoop had been the only hula hoop north of

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I N D I A N C O U N T R Y / S o n n y a n d C h i c k i e the Arctic Circle, too. It had come north to Kotzebue on the barge, which is how Swede always ordered stuff for the store.

Which is why Chickie always got to eat real potatoes instead of fake ones.

“Real potatoes taste a whole lot better than fake ones,”

Chickie announced.

“I don’t care for potatoes,” Donna said quietly.

Chickie put her fork down with a sigh and studied the dry brown meat, slimy vegetables, and wedge of pie. At least the pie looked good. She took a bite of it, just to see, watching the nuns, who still stood by their food in the food line. It was apple pie with real apples and it did taste good.

Apple pie is as American as Wheaties and milk. Th at’s what

Swede said one time. Not that they ever got Wheaties and milk at home. Th

ey’d probably get lots of Wheaties at Sacred

Heart, though, lots of Wheaties with this lumpy powdered milk. Canned milk was better. Why couldn’t they have canned milk? Chickie took another bite of pie and looked at Donna sideways.

“I wonder if that