"Blume, Judy - Just As Long As We're Together" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blume Judy)

I guess I fell asleep holding Bruce because soon my mother was gently shaking me and whispering, "Come on, Steph. . . let's go back to bed."
She walked me down the hail to my room. "He had a nightmare," I said, groggily.
Mom tucked me into bed and kissed both my cheeks.
The next morning, when I came into the kitchen, Bruce was sitting at the table, writing a letter.
I poured myself a glass of orange juice. "Who are you writing to today?" I asked.
"The President," Bruce said.
"Oh, the President." I set out a bowl for my cereal.
"You should write, too," Bruce said. "If everybody writes to the President he'll have to listen. Here . . ." Bruce shoved a piece of notebook paper at me.
"Not while I'm eating," I said. I finished my cereal, rinsed the bowl, then brought the box of doughnuts to the table. Mom is a doughnut addict but since we moved she's buying only the plain or the whole wheat kind. No artificial flavors or colors, no preservatives. Mom will eat only one a day now, at the most two, because she's trying to lose weight. I miss glazed doughnuts. I miss chocolate and jelly filled too.
"Mom is going to kill you," Bruce said.
"For what?"
"Polishing off three doughnuts."
Three? I counted the ones left in the box. He was right. Sometimes when I'm eating I forget to keep track.
I washed my doughnuts down with another glass of juice and then I started my letter.
Dear Mr. President,
I really think you should do more to make
sure we never have a nuclear war. War is stupid, as you know. My brother, who is ten, has
nightmares about it. Probably other kids do, too. I have mainly good dreams. My friend, Rachel, says I am an optimist. Even so, I don't want to die and neither do any of my friends. Why can't you arrange more meetings with other countries and try harder to get along. Make some treaties. Make them for one hundred years so we don't have to worry for a long time. You could also get rid of all the nuclear weapons in the world and then maybe Bruce, my brother, could get a decent night's sleep.
Yours truly,
Stephanie B. Hirsch
I like using my middle initial for formal occasions. The B stands for Behrens. That's my mother's maiden name.
I shoved my letter across the table, at Bruce. He read it. "This is about dreams," he said.
"No, it's not," I told him. "It's about nuclear war."
"But there's a lot in it about dreams."
"So . . . what's wrong with that? If you didn't have bad dreams about nuclear war we wouldn't be writing to the President, would we?"
"I don't know," Bruce said. "And you didn't make paragraphs, either."
"I didn't make paragraphs on purpose," I said. That wasn't true but I wasn't going to admit it
to Bruce. "I think it's an outstanding letter,"~ I said. "I think the part about the hundred year treaties is really brilliant."
"In a hundred years we'll be dead," Bruce said, sounding gloomy.
"So will everybody."
"No. . . people who aren't born yet won't be."
"That doesn't count," I said. "Everybody we know will be dead in a hundred years."
"I don't like to think about being dead," Bruce said.
"Who does?" I passed him the doughnut box. "Here," I said, "have one. . . it'll make you feel better."
"I don't like these doughnuts," he said, "especially in the morning."
8.
Saturdays.
Ever since Dad went to L.A. Mom takes Bruce and me to the office with her on Saturdays. She's got a travel agency in town. Going Places is the name of it. Aunt Denise says Mom is a real go-getter. She says she hopes I take after her. I don't know if I do or not. Mom had puppy fat like me when she was a girl. And we both have brown hair and blue eyes if that means anything.
I reminded Mom this was the Saturday Rachel and I were going to shop with Alison, to help her fix up her room. "Rachel says it's very depressing the way it is. It's all gray."
"Gray is a sophisticated color," Mom said.
"But it's so blab . . . it doesn't suit Alison," I told her. "Alison is a very cheerful person."
"She sounds like a good match for you," Mom
said.
"I think she is. I think we're really going to get along."
"What about Rachel?" Mom asked.
"She wants to be Alison's friend, too. She wants to help her get adjusted here. We're meeting in front of the bank at one o'clock. Is that okay?"
"I think we can arrange to give you the afternoon off," Mom said. "But try and get as much as you can done this morning."
"You know I'm a hard worker," I said.
My job is filing. Craig taught me how to do it. He's one of Mom's part-time assistants. He wears a gold earring in one ear and has a scraggly moustache that he's always touching to make sure it's still there. He wants to write travel guides to places like Africa and India when he's out of college. So far he's only been as far away as Maine.
There's no big deal to filing as long as you know the alphabet. The only thing I have to remember is that we file front to back here, which means I have to put the latest papers at the end of the folder, not at the beginning.