“BANG!” the door was shut loudly. It was just standing there, with my father standing on one side, and I on the other side.

We were both in great anger. “Never set foot in this house again!” my father said angrily. With tears in my eyes, I rushed out of the flat and ran along the street.

I didn’t know whether it was because I had grown up or because my dad was getting old. He always put his opinions on me. We were just like two people in two different worlds. It felt like there was an iron door between us that could never be opened.

My heart was frozen on this hot summer night. As I walked on, there were fewer and fewer people on the streets. When I finally reached my house, I saw that the light was still on.

All the lights were off except living room’s.

The referee’s whistle (哨子) went off, which signaled Sadie’s being against the rules of the game. It was only the first quarter, and Sadie had already crashed twice into another player’s wheelchair. Her coach waved her off the court for a substitution (替换) as the crowd responded with catcalls and laughed at her. She had never seen a crowd express such disappointment before.

Sadie watched her teammates fight in front of her. Her emotions were all over the place, and they showed in her basketball playing. If only she and her brother Richie had not argued this morning about the game. “What’s so important, Richie, that you can’t be at the game? Don’t I matter anymore?” Sadie had asked.

Richie is Sadie’s whole world, and they both love sports, especially basketball. Sadie loved to play before her accident, and it was Richie who taught her to play again afterwards. There had been days when she did not want to get out of bed, and he would persuade her until she got up. He even borrowed a wheelchair himself to help her learn to play the game all over again. Together they would roll across the outdoor court, playing all day long.

But lately Richie had preferred to hang out with his new high school friends. Sadie would watch through the window as Richie cleaned his new bike. He was as careful as a mother cat cleaning her baby cats. When he went away, Sadie would keep staring out of the window, tears clouding her eyes.

Mama was her sun. Her arms would reach out and encircle her. “Sadie,” she would say, “your brother loves you. Even though he’s got new friends now, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you.” But Sadie felt hurt.

Sadie looked up and saw her coach shaking his head. She searched sadly for her mother, expecting disappointment in her eyes, but instead she saw a wide smile. It was the same happy face she saw in photos at home. Sadie followed her mother’s gaze (注视) to find a figure jogging toward her across the gym.

It was Richie, holding a bunch of purple and white flowers.

Those words meant more to Sadie than “I’m sorry” and she went back onto the court happily.

As he lay awake that night, Tony could hear his parents discussing his sister Alice’s birthday. It was just two days away. Birthdays were always a lot of fun, even though there was no money for store-bought gifts. Nearly all of toys he and his sister had were homemade. There was nothing wrong with that, he knew. Like many families in this part, they were poor.

This birthday would be different, though. Alice was older now, and he’d seen how her eyes lit up when she saw the new doll at Honey House, a neighborhood store just down the road from their house.

How he longed for her to have it! An idea finally came to him just before he went to bed. After a quick breakfast the following morning, he tied a bag to the handlebars of his bike and headed toward a village hill.

After a long journey, he reached his destination, the mango forest. There were already two other boys there. Tony grabbed his bag and set to work immediately.

The sun was high overhead. The weather was hot and nearly all of the taller trees held ripe mangoes but they were well beyond reach. Tony struggled to climb the trees to pick mangoes, though he fell off many times.

His efforts were sometimes rewarded when a mango dropped into the bag. After a while his neck ached from looking upward, and his arms grew sore. He kept at it, though, and by late afternoon his bag was nearly full.

Tony rushed back to Honey House, out of breath, only to find the owner of the store was going to close the door.

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The following morning, Alice walked into the kitchen and took a seat at the breakfast table.

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