"Cabot, Meg - 1-800-Where-R-You 04 - Sanctuary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cabot Meg)

to. Not enough snow was expected, however, for them to cancel school on Monday,
much to my chagrin.
"Thanks, Jessica," Dr. Thompkins said, looking past me through the foyer, to
where he could see everybody gathered in the dining room. "Oh, I'm sorry. I
didn't mean to interrupt your meal."
"No biggie," I said. "Want some turkey? We have plenty."
"Oh, no. No, thank you," Dr. Thompkins said. "I just stopped by because I was
hoping … well, it's sort of embarrassing, but I wanted to see if …"
Dr. Thompkins seemed pretty nervous. I assumed he needed to borrow something.
Whenever anybody in the neighborhood needs to borrow something, particularly
something cooking related, we are almost always their first stop. Because my
parents are in the restaurant business, we pretty much have anything you could
possibly need to cook with, and generally in giant bulk containers.
Since he was from a big city, and all, I guessed Dr. Thompkins wasn't aware that
in a small town, it's perfectly acceptable to ask your neighbors if you can
borrow something. There was actually a lot I suspected Dr. Thompkins didn't know
about our town. For instance, I suspected that Dr. Thompkins wasn't aware that
even though Indiana officially sided with the North during the Civil War, there
were still some people—especially in the southern half of the state, where we
live—who didn't think the Confederates were so bad.
That's why the day the Thompkinses' moving truck pulled up, my mom was over
there with a big dish of manicotti, welcoming them to the neighborhood, before
they'd even gotten out of the car, practically. Mrs. Abramowitz, who can't cook
to save her life, brought over store-bought pastries in a big white box. And the
Lippmans came over with a plate of Claire's famous chocolate-chip cookies. (Her
secret? They're Tollhouse Break and Bake. All Claire does is grease the cookie
pan. Seriously. I am privy to secrets like this, and many other much more
interesting ones, now that Claire is my brother's girlfriend.)
Just about everybody in the neighborhood, and a lot of neighborhoods farther
away, showed up to welcome the Thompkinses to our town the day they moved in. I
bet, coming from Chicago and all, the Thompkinses must have thought we were a
true bunch of freaks, knocking on their door all day long, and even several days
after they'd gotten moved in, with brownies and eggplant parmigiana and
Snickerdoodles and macaroni and cheese and Jell-O salad and homemade coffee
cake.
But what the Thompkins didn't know—and what we were all too aware of—was that
our town, like the United States a hundred and fifty years ago, had a line
running through the middle of it, dividing it into two distinct parts. There was
the part Lumbley Lane was on, which also held the courthouse square and most of
the businesses, including the hospital and the mall and the high school and
stuff. This part of the city housed what people in my school call the "Townies."
And then there was the rest of the county, outside the city limits, which
consisted mostly of woods and cornfields, with the occasional trailer park and
abandoned plastics factory thrown in for picturesque effect. Outside town, there
were still patches of illiteracy, prejudice, and even, in the deepest backwoods,
where my dad used to take us camping when we were little, moonshining. Kids at
school called people who lived this far outside of town, and who had to be bused
in for school, "Grits," as that is what many of them purportedly have for
breakfast every morning. Grits are like oatmeal, only not as socially
acceptable, and without raisins.