介绍： 关于初恋，最好的一本英文小说，比电影来得更细水流长，更能打动人心。朗读者也很好地演绎了这段感情，值得去慢慢体会。

Chapter 08：The Yard

I'd never been embarrassed by where we lived before. I'd never looked at our house, or even our side of the street, and said, Oh! I wish we lived in the new development—thos...

介绍： 关于初恋，最好的一本英文小说，比电影来得更细水流长，更能打动人心。朗读者也很好地演绎了这段感情，值得去慢慢体会。

Chapter 08：The Yard

I'd never been embarrassed by where we lived before. I'd never looked at our house, or even our side of the street, and said, Oh! I wish we lived in the new development—those houses are so much newer, so much better! This is where I'd grown up. This was my home.I was aware of the yard, sure. My mother had grumbled about it for years. But it was a low grumbling, not worthy of deep concern. Or so I'd supposed. But maybe I should have wondered. Why let the outside go and keep the inside so nice? It was spotless inside our house.Except for the boys' room, that is. Mom gave up on that after she discovered the snake. If they were old enough to adopt a snake, she told my brothers, they were old enough to clean their own room. Matt and Mike translated this to keep the door closed, and became quite diligent about doing just that.

Besides the yard, I also never really wondered about the money, or the apparent lack thereof. I knew we weren't rich, but I didn't feel like I was missing anything. Anything you could buy, anyway.Matt and Mike did ask for things a lot, but even though my mother would tell them, No, boys, we just can't afford that, I took this to mean, No, boys,you don't deserve that, or, No, boys, you don't really need that. It wasn't until Bryce called our home a complete dive that I started really seeing things.

It wasn't just the yard. It was my dad's truck, my mother's car, the family bike that was more rust than steel, and the fact that when we did buy something new, it always seemed to come from a second-time-around store. Plus, we never went on vacation. Ever.Why was that? My father was the hardest-working man in the world, and my mother worked for TempService doing secretarial jobs whenever she could. What was all that hard work about if this is where it got you?

Asking my parents whether we were poor seemed incredibly impolite. But as the days went by, I knew I had to ask. Just had to. Every day I'd ride home from school on our rusty bike, pull past the broken fence and patchy yard, and think, Tonight. I'll ask them tonight.But then I wouldn't ask them. I just didn't know how.Then one day I had an idea. A way to talk to them about it and maybe help out a little, too. And since my brothers were working at the music store that night, and nobody was saying much of anything at the table, I took a deep breath and said, “I was thinking, you know, that it wouldn't be hard to fix up the front yard if I could get some nails and a hammer and maybe some paint? And how much does grass seed cost? It can't be that much,right? I could plant a lawn, and maybe even some flowers?” My parents stopped eating and stared at me.

“I know how to use a saw and a hammer—it could be, you know, a project.” My mother quit looking at me and stared at my father, instead.

My father sighed and said, “The yard is not our responsibility, Julianna.” “It's … it's not?”

He shook his head and said, “It's Mr. Finnegan's.” “Who's Mr. Finnegan?”

“The man who owns this house.”

......

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