First Chapter Friday- An Invisible Thread

Hey, I'm back with first chapter Friday.

This week I'm reading a book that I have read.

Um, I think three times total, and each time I

just love it.

So this is one of my favorite books I've ever

read. There is an adult version of this book, and

there is a young adult like Young Readers Edition, and

this is a young readers edition.

I have a copy of this, so in person, if

you want to borrow it for me, you're welcome to,

um, just let me know.

It's called Invisible Thread.

It's written by Laura Straathof, and this is all a

true story.

And so if you know anything about me, you know

the books that I love to read our books about

people specifically when people write about their lives, that's something

that I really, really enjoy reading about.

So I read, um, the back to you.

And then I'm gonna go ahead and begin reading and

says, one raining.

One rainy afternoon on a crowded New York City street

corner, 11 year old Maurice met Laura.

Maurice asked Laura for spare change because he was hungry

and something made Laura stop and ask Maurice if she

could take him to lunch.

An invisible threat is a true story of the bond

between an 11 year old boy in a busy sales

executive, heartwarming journey of hope, kindness, adventure and love and

the power of fate to help us find our way.

Yeah, yeah, and, um Laura is the author of the

book, so she is like one of the main characters

in the book as well.

So she's writing about her own experience.

Um, and this is her story that she is telling

in the beginning, Um, where it has, like the dedications

that says to all the Children like Maurice, never lose

hope and never stop dreaming because the power of dreams

can lift you and to all Children who feel who

will never be food deprived.

Always count your blessings and keep sharing threads of kindness.

Mhm note to readers know Spoke is based on the

true story of Laura Shroff and Maurice Magic.

Some events have been condensed, rearranged or slightly dramatized to

better suit young readers.

An invisible thread.

Chapter one.

Maurice woke up in the closet.

This was where he he woke most mornings, A small,

dark closet.

He slept there because it was the only quiet place

in the apartment where he lived.

The apartment was only one room, and sometimes as many

as 11 people lived and slept where slept there at

the same time, the room had only two single beds

where his two older sisters slept in his aunt and

maybe a cousin or two.

The beds had no pillows, no blankets.

Over in one corner, there was a chair, and on

the opposite side was a half a fridge and a

small TV, and that was it.

I'm gonna show you a picture of Marie so you

can kind of picture this, um, as I'm reading.

So that's a picture of him when he was a

kid. This took place in, like, 1985 ish.

I think it's been a while ago.

There were always at least four or five grownups around,

staying up late and making lots of noise.

That's why some nights Marie sneaked away to the closet,

closed the door behind him, curled up and drifted asleep

on a thin mat on the floor.

It was a little cramped and kind of spooky, but

at least it was his own private space.

Maurice was 11 years old.

He was tall for his age but skinnier than most

of the other 11 year olds.

He knew his burgundy sweat pants, which were a few

sizes too big, barely stayed up on his waist.

He had no choice but to wear them even when

they were dirty, which they, they always were, because they

were the only pants he owned.

On this September morning, Maurice woke and used to open

the closet door.

He stretched his long arms up towards the sky and

looked around the apartment.

Since there were no curtains on the windows, the room

was filled with sunlight.

Even so, everyone in the room was still asleep.

Maurice counted the people 12 three, 10 10 people, not

including him.

His mother, Garcelle a, was sleeping.

Maurice went over and nudged her shoulder to see if

she could see if she would budge.

But he had no luck.

His mother had a funny look on her face that

Maurice was very used to seeing that look meant she

was off by herself in some far off the world,

and she couldn't be reached.

Maurice's mother was sick.

He understood that he wasn't sure what her sickness was

or why it made her act the way she did.

He just knew that Barcella couldn't always be like other

moms. She couldn't always buy him new clothes, for instance,

or make sure he had a warm bed to sleep

in. She couldn't always remember.

He was fed if he was fed everyday stuff like

that. But just because she was sick didn't mean she

didn't love him.

Maurice knew his mother loved him more than anything in

the world.

She just couldn't always show it because of her sickness.

Over in the corner and the only only chair in

the room sat Marines Grandmother rose, her eyes closed.

Maurice couldn't tell if she was just asleep or resting.

Either way, he didn't want to go near her.

Grandma Rose was a tough lady.

She was a tiny little thing, just shy of 5

ft. But she wasn't afraid of anything or anybody.

Grandma Rose spoke her mind and said whatever she was

thinking, even if it upset everyone around her.

And if someone got sassy with her, she might even

take a swing at them, knock them right in the

nose people in their community knew Grandma Rose didn't take

well to being disrespected.

The way to deal with Grandma Rose was just let

her be.

Yet when it came to Maurice, Grandma Rose was sweet

and kind.

She had a real soft spot for her grandson.

You're a good child, she told him all the time.

Grandma Rose looked out for Maurice and made sure he

knew she'd always be there to protect him.

For Maurice, Grandma Rose's attention was like a great big,

beautiful gift.

And he loved her, just like he loved his mother.

For a brief moment, he thought about going to her

chair and nudging her to see if she was awake

just to have someone to talk to.

But he's decided against it better just let her be.

Maurice looked around the apartment.

His two sisters, Celestine LaToya, were asleep on one bad

as usual, twisted around each other, arms and legs everywhere.

Marie Suzie and her two young Children, Maurice's cousins, were

asleep on the other single bed.

Three grown men were asleep on the floor.

Maurice recognized him.

They were his uncle's uncle, Juice, Uncle Big and Uncle.

Old Marissa's uncles came and went from the apartment.

Maurice never knew if they would be there or not.

Sometimes he stuck around for a few weeks.

Other times, it just dropped in for a little while.

Maurice had three other uncles, and sometimes they slept there,

too. They were all nice to him most of the

time, but they all seemed too busy to be bothered

with him much.

Mostly, they ignored him.

Maurice understood that the adults in his life didn't have

much time for Children.

That's just the way it was.

As far as Maurice knew.

It was the same for every for kids everywhere.

So why would his life be any different?

Maurice went over to the small, half sized refrigerator that

was sitting on the floor of the apartment.

A tiny television sat on top of it.

Maurice opened the fridge and looked inside.

The light bulb was missing, but he could still make

out the layer of grime coding the single shelf.

And you could tell there was no food, no milk

or better cheese slices or anything.

Just a bottle of water in a box of baking

soda, which Maurice knew not to touch another side effect

of his mother's sickness.

She couldn't always remember to stock the fridge.

Maurice felt a familiar paying in his stomach.

He felt like he had swallowed a heavy rock, and

now it was just sitting there inside his belly, weighing

him down, making him miserable.

It was a dull, endless ache, like someone had punched

him in the gut.

Hunger, Marie said, eaten anything in two days.

Two whole days, his body was crying out for food.

Okay, Okay, Marissa, time to find something to eat.

Maurice pulled on his dirty burgundy sweatpants and through his

matching burgundy sweatshirt over his head.

Then he slipped his feet into a scuffed up white

sneakers that were one size too small and had ripped

shoelaces. He didn't go into the bathroom to brush his

teeth because he didn't have a toothbrush.

He remembered having won a long time ago, but it

disappeared, and anyway, the bathroom wasn't even in the apartment.

It was down the hall.

They shared it with everyone on the floor, and it

was almost always occupied.

Maurice didn't have a lot of things.

For instance, he didn't have a game boy or a

football to toss around or a little race car to

wind up and race across the floor or a bicycle.

He didn't have new sneakers or winter coat or hat

or gloves or a scarf.

Come to think of it, he didn't have a home,

either. Not really.

Anyway. The apartment where his family was staying was only

temporary and replace he'd ever loved was temporary.

Soon, Maurice figured they would get kicked out and have

to find another place to live.

Homeless is what people called it.

Most kids spent their whole spend their whole childhood in

the same home, and his 11 years Maurice had already

lived in 20 different places.

That's what it means to be homeless.

It means never getting to feel like you were safe

in one place.

Birthday parties.

Maurice didn't have those either.

He couldn't remember ever having won.

Sometimes he wasn't even sure how old he was.

Was he 11 or 12?

Maybe someone forgot a year in between, Maurice had never

been taken on a family vacation.

In fact, he'd never been outside of New York City.

He'd never even stepped on grass.

He didn't know what it was like to play on

a swing set or drink a glass of fresh squeezed

orange juice.

These things just weren't part of his world.

And where is this world?

The only thing that mattered was being able to take

care of himself.

Luckily for Maurice, he was a tough little guy as

tough as Grandma Rose.

Well, maybe not that tough, but pretty tough for a

kid. And even though he didn't have a father, his

dad left.

When Maurice was just six years old, he had a

mother who loved him, a grandmother who was kind to

him, two sisters who could make him laugh, and several

uncles who liked him well enough.

Maurice had a family.

Maurice believed that if you have your family, you're doing

pretty good.

Maurice didn't feel unlucky.

Sure, some kids had it easier than him.

He knew that from looking through a department store windows

and seeing kids his age getting new clothes or new

toys, especially around Christmas time.

He could tell from the from the way some people

dressed in fancy suits with fancy shoes that they had

lots of money while his family didn't.

But not once did Maurice ever feel sorry for himself

because as far as he was concerned he was doing

just fine.

What good would feeling sorry do anyway?

Better to mind his own business and keep taking care

of himself, which today meant finding food.

Maurice knew what had to happen whenever he was really

starving. He would go out and stand on a street

corner and ask strangers passing by for money.

Porter, a nickel a penny on a very lucky day,

maybe even a dollar bill, whatever they were willing to

give. And enough people gave him a few points to

be able to go to the pizza parlor on Broadway

and by a single slice of pizza.

Delicious cheesy pizza, his favorite.

And if you got really lucky, maybe he'd even get

to buy a cheeseburger and french fries at McDonald's on

56th Street and Eighth Avenue, his favorite place of all.

And he got really, really lucky.

Maybe he'd have enough coins left over to go to

the arcade on Broadway and play a video game like

asteroids, which cost a quarter.

It was one of his favorite things to do, and

he was actually pretty good at it, even though he

didn't get to play arcade games too often, Greece went

over to his mother and kissed her lightly on the

cheek, and he slipped quietly out on the front door.

The long hallway was dark and dirty.

No one ever came around to vacuum the floors and

wipe out the cobwebs.

The lights were busted in the carpet had long since

been ripped out.

The walls were staying and covered with graffiti in the

hallway, smelled of Greece and mold.

Maurice ran quickly, passed all the old newspapers and empty

bottles on the floor and flew down five sets of

stairs, three steps at a time, to the lobby.

And then, with one final burst, he was out of

the building and on the street, in a way, the

streets of New York City, where Maurice is real home.

He knew the streets.

He understands the streets.

He owned the streets on the concrete sidewalks.

No one paid him any attention, which meant he could

do whatever he pleased and go wherever he wanted.

And no one would say a word about it.

No one cared.

No one worried.

It was like he was invisible.

Maybe that was his superpower.

Invisibility, Marie, Select it that way.

But sometimes a man or woman would give him a

dirty look if he got too close to them or

they would take big steps to move away from him.

My mother with a baby stroller might speed up to

get past him more quickly, as if just being near

him was a problem.

Maybe they thought he would take something from them, which

was ridiculous.

He'd never taken a single thing from a stranger, but

mostly everyone left him alone.

Maurice turned the corner of 54th Street, marched up Broadway.

The biggest and longest avenue in Manhattan, was the busiest.

Two people were always on their way in and out

of Delhi's and diners and office buildings lots of people,

so many that they formed a kind of rolling human

wave that swept down the sidewalks of Broadway.

Brushing past and nearly swallowing him up, Maurice had to

dart left and right to dodge all the adult streaming

past him to their destinations.

Finally, he arrived at the corner of 56th Street and

Broadway, his favorite corner.

He stood on a square.

He stood on a square of the sidewalk, his spot,

and he stuck out his right hand and said, Well,

he probably said a million times before.

Excuse me, Can you spare any any change?

I'm hungry.

The human wave rolled past him.

People in fancy suits and fancy shoes.

They didn't stop or look at him or ask him

why he was there.

They just kept moving.

They had their own lives, their own problems.

Or maybe he was just too little and they didn't

even see him.

Maybe Maurice actually was invisible.

And then a pretty woman, nicely dressed with brown hair

down to her shoulders, caught his eyes.

She was about his mother's age, and she had a

kind face.

Maurice had learned to read people's faces, and sometimes you

can tell when someone would stop and give them some

change just by their expression.

This woman was walking fairly fast, like everyone did in

New York, always in a hurry to get where they

were going.

But something about her felt different.

Maybe she would notice him.

Maybe she would stop.

Maybe she would be the one.

Maurice had a good feeling as she got to where

he was standing when she was right in front of

him. Marie stuck out his hand and put on the

best smile.

Excuse me, do you have any spare change?

He said.

I'm hungry for a split second.

The woman looked down at Maurice.

They made eye contact.

She had heard him, and now she had seen him.

He wasn't invisible anymore.

And then no, the woman said as she looked straight

ahead and kept on walking.

Maurice watched her walk away.

He watched her start to cross Broadway to the other

side of the avenue.

Oh, well, he thought.

Just keep asking.

Someone will stop.

Forget about her.

And just when he thought that something strange happened out

of the corner of his eye, Marie saw a woman

standing in the middle of Broadway, right in the center

of the street with cars and trucks everywhere.

And it wasn't just any woman.

It was the same woman who had walked right by

him. Hey, are you crazy?

Lady? Get out of the street!

The driver yell.

The sound of the car

First Chapter Friday- An Invisible Thread

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