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Back The Cloud Chamber Save as PDF
Chapters (35)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. Author’s Note
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Twenty-Two
  28. Twenty-Three
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty

The game felt endless to Nate, all the more so because of the fun the others seemed to be having in the next lane. Normally, he was a good bowler, but he was getting low scores tonight, sixes and sevens mostly. He got up to buy a bag of candy for the three of them. When he returned, Pauline was standing in front of Naomi, hands on her hips.

“Okay,” she said. “I know you have it. Give it back.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Naomi said. Her hair was gathered up in a series of irregularly spaced pigtails—another one of Junie’s hairdos for her, held in place with barrettes in the shape of kittens and yellow plastic happy faces.

“My bracelet,” Pauline said. Jennifer came over to join her. The two of them looked witheringly at Naomi—her mismatched clothes, her dumb-looking hair.

“We know you took it in the bathroom. Give it back.”

“I never took anything,” Naomi said. “I don’t steal.”

“I’ll have you know those charms are sterling silver,” Pauline said. “When my dad finds out, he’ll have a cow, and it’ll all be your fault.”

“I never touched your dumb bracelet,” Naomi said again. Next to her, Junie placed a hand on Naomi’s arm.

“She never touched your dumb bracelet,” Junie repeated. “Why don’t you go mind your own beeswax?”

“Just because you don’t have anything pretty of your own doesn’t give you the right to take nice things from someone else,” Pauline hissed. “Just because your own clothes are always so gross ...”

Larry and the others had stopped their game by now.

“She told you already, she doesn’t know anything about it,” Nate said. “We’re trying to play our game here.”

But it was ruined after that. They finished up their game, but no one suggested they start another one. The final scores were Nate, 86; Junie, 9; Naomi, 4. They brought their shoes back, paid, and left, calling Uncle Harold from the pay phone outside to come pick them up.

“Done so soon?” he asked. “We figured you’d be there another hour or two, at least.”

“It wasn’t so much fun after all,” Junie said when he got there a little later. “Bowling’s not as great as I remembered.”

Twenty-One

JUNIE’S FIRST-GRADE CLASS WAS PUTTING ON A PLAY, The Three Little Pigs. Once, Junie would have been excited to have such a good part—the little pig who builds her house out of bricks. But she had barely mentioned to Nate and their mother that the performance was coming up. She hadn’t even asked them to rehearse her lines with her. And when Nate asked her about it, she’d said, “It doesn’t matter if I get my lines wrong. My teacher’s going to be sitting right there with the book if anyone forgets.”