The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

about being polite.”
I stomped my crutch. It landed on one of Jamie’s paper planes, smashing it
into the rug. Jamie howled. I didn’t care.
Miss Smith got up. “What’s wrong with you?”
“My stomach hurts!”
“You’re angry,” she said. “But you can’t take it out on Jamie. Say you’re
sorry and see if you can fix that plane.”
“I’m not sorry,” I said.
Miss Smith pressed her eyes shut. “Say it anyhow,” she said.
“No!”
“Jamie, come here.” Miss Smith sat down on the sofa and opened her
arms, and Jamie crawled into her lap. Ever since she’d hugged him in his
classroom, he’d been cuddling up to her. I could hardly stand it. “Your sister’s
having a hard time,” Miss Smith told him. “She didn’t mean to rip your
plane.”
I wanted to say, I did too, only it was such a lie. I never meant to hurt
Jamie. He just sometimes got in the way. But looking at him curled up on
Miss Smith’s lap made me want to scream. Nobody did that for me.
Except that Miss Smith patted the space beside her. “Sit down,” she said.
“No, really. Sit.”
And then she put her arm around me, and pulled me halfway over.
She did.
I was almost on her lap.
“You’re so stiff,” she said. “It’s like trying to comfort a piece of wood.”
It felt very odd to have her touch me. Of course it made me tense. But I
didn’t go away inside my head. I sat on the sofa with Miss Smith’s arm
around me, and Jamie breathing soft near my shoulder, and I watched the coal
fire flicker, and I stayed right there, right there in that room, and none of us
moved for half an hour. Jamie fell asleep, and Miss Smith and I just sat,
neither of us saying a word, until it was time to put the blackout up, and make
tea.