Joy of Reading ~ Maine

...from Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

She opened the newspaper, which Arlo had set out for her.  She flipped past the front-page news and the Arts section, landing finally on the Sunday circular.  She didn't clip coupons, but the women in her family had always been so obsessed with them that she could never shake the habit of looking them over, just in case there was something amazing to be found, though of course there never was.  One ad offered free floss with the purchase of five tubes of toothpaste.  As if floss had ever broken the bank for anyone.  Human beings were strange about free stuff.  Her mother was the queen of it--I got four bottles of ketchup for the price of one, Alice had bragged over the phone a few weeks earlier.  Who needed four bottles of ketchup?