Bat Summer Read Online Free PDF Page A

the horse,” Lucy tells Martin.
    â€œKnight, Lucy. It’s a knight,” Russell says.
    â€œI just call ’em like I see ’em,” says Lucy.
    â€œAnd she does see ’em,” Martin says, shaking his head. “See you later, Luscious. Nice to meet you, Terence.” I give another little wave as we leave the table. Russell doesn’t even look up. It’s like when that clock is on, there’s no world beyond that chess board.
    Lucy sits down on one of the benches on the other side of the tree and pats the spot beside her. Guys don’t do stuff like pat the seat beside them. It’s an unwritten rule. I keep forgetting Lucy’s not a guy. Not that she looks like a guy. I just don’t feel like I’m hanging around with a girl when I’m with her. I know I felt strange about her this morning, but that had more to do with her being a weirdo than with her being a girl.
    â€œYou play chess?” I say. “It looks pretty complicated.”
    â€œNo big deal,” she says. “I’ll show you sometime. You only have to know two things to play chess: one, you have to know how all the pieces move, and, two, you have to kill the king to win.”
    â€œWhat’s the horse?”
    â€œI told you, I’ll show you another time. You can’t explain it without the board. Now, did I lug this thing all the way over here for nothing?”
    I’m not really all that interested in the bat book. I wonder what Lucy did with the kite. I want to go kite-flying again so we can talk some more while we fly the kite. I want to know what Lucy hears at night, and if it’s anything like what I hear. The sound of my mom’s key in the lock when she comes home after midnight, the quiet of everything else in the house against the chug of traffic out on Bathurst Street.
    Lucy flips the book open. There is a picture of a bat with its wings spread out. Its ears are gigantic and its nose looks like someone hit it in the face with a shovel.
    â€œOur fingers make up the bones in the wing,” says Lucy. “The wing is actually a membrane that covers all the fingers except the thumb. We use the thumb for climbing. The membrane is so thin, it’s almost translucent. Like when you hold a sheet up to the light and you can see through it. You can see our bones right through the wings.”
    We? I know Lucy thinks she’s a bat. But does she really think she’s got a bat body? I look her straight in the eye to see if she’s on the level. She looks at me, but then turns back to the book.
    â€œBats have difficulty walking because our legs aretoo weak to support the weight of our bodies.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I say.
    â€œYou heard me, Terence. We can hardly walk from being too heavy for our little feet.”
    â€œYou mean
real
bats can hardly walk,” I say. She slams the book shut.
    â€œI told you. I
am
a bat.” She closes her eyes. “You still don’t get it, do you? I thought you got it.” I want to talk about gaps, so I give.
    â€œI get it. I get it. You see the world upside-down. You have trouble walking because you’re too heavy for your feet.” And then this flash goes off in my head. I know about being too heavy, the same way I know about hearing gaps.
    I start talking quickly. “It’s like that for me some mornings. On the weekend, when there’s absolutely nothing to do, and I can’t sleep in no matter how hard I try. I feel like I’m a million pounds getting out of bed. I can hardly make it to the couch before I have to keel over again. I can hardly carry myself to the fridge.” I can’t believe I’m telling her this. The thing is, I know she understands. Tom might understand if you explained it to him for an hour. Rico would never get it.
    I look up at Lucy. She’s boring a hole right through me with her laser eyes.
    â€œYou might be a bat,” she says.