CHAPTER FOUR
By the time Jake got out of the hospital, school had started again. That year passed slowly with Jake holed up in his room while he continued to recover. Whenever I could, I visited him at the hospital and then at home, bringing library books, which I read aloud in the animated fashion he loved. However, our visits were strained because of unanswered questions neither of us wanted to bring up.
Jake broke both his tibia and his femur, so he was in a cast for months. When the cast was eventually removed, he was left with a permanent limp. He joked about the limp just to make everyone else feel comfortable, and he often did pratfalls in order to entertain me. In spite of his ever-present humor, something had changed. He was working harder than ever to act happy, but his growing
