Bat Summer Read Online Free PDF

“I’m not sure. We’ll have to do some more checking.” She looks at mewith those piercing eyes and it’s like she’s trying to see my bones.
    â€œWhat kind of checking?” I know it’s crazy, but as soon as she says it, I want more than anything to be a bat. I want to belong to batdom. I want my wings, man. I want to fly.
    â€œI don’t know,” says Lucy. “I
know
I’m a bat. It’s like knowing how to chew. You don’t think about it, you just do it. I just am a bat.”
    â€œBut you weren’t always one, were you? You said it was something that chose you. How did you know?”
    I want to be chosen by bats. I want to be a bat like Lucy.
    â€œYou know, we didn’t always live in an apartment,” she says. “I used to live in a house. I miss it. But anyway…in our old house on the Escarpment we had bats in our attic. My parents didn’t know about them for a long time. Not until…” She stops for a moment. “I could hear them through my closet. I could hear them come home in the early morning. I woke up just to hear them come in. The trap door to the attic was in my closet, but the door to it was missing, and I could see straight up through to the rafters. One day, I piled a bunch of old telephone books in my closet and got up there. The bats were roosting in the corner, all huddled up together to keep warm, all hanging upside-down. They were nobigger than my hand. I went tip to visit them every day. I had to be very quiet so that I wouldn’t disturb the other bats. For a long time, my parents and Daphne never knew. For a long time they thought I was normal.”
    She looks at me to see if I’m paying attention. She picks at a piece of paint on the bench, which is a challenge when you don’t have any fingernails. I start picking at the bench, too.
    â€œI liked it up there. It was dark, and nobody knew where I was. I found some old rope and I used it to make a slip knot. You know, like a noose. I tied it to one of the rafters near the corner where the bats slept. I got a stool from the kitchen and slipped my feet through the knot, then I let myself go. I hung upside-down like that a few times. The rope burned my ankles, and Mom asked about the stains on my socks.”
    I get a really good chip of paint off the bench and hold it up for Lucy’s approval. She nods. “Anyway, the point is I didn’t do it because I enjoyed it. I did it because I had to do it. It felt like I was falling, swinging upside-down like that. I had to know what it was like to feel like I was falling. Like Timber.”
    She stops again suddenly. I remember how she got upset when Rico yelled “Timber” the other day.
    I don’t know what to say. I keep picking at the paint on the bench. I wonder what it would feel liketo hang loose from the ceiling. I never even thought of doing anything like that. All this time I’ve been watching crappy television shows I could have been hanging upside-down instead.
    I want to say how cool it is to think of doing something like that, but the words don’t come out of my mouth. I wonder if Tom would think it’s cool to hang upside-down.
    â€œWhat did you do with your hands when you were hanging upside-down?” I ask.
    â€œI tied the cape around my waist and sort of let them hang folded up. Here, I’ll show you.” Lucy walks over to the set of monkey bars that looks like a big blue planet. She climbs almost to the top and lets herself hang upside-down. Her spiky hair fans out around her head. She takes the ends of her cape and ties them tightly around her waist. She folds her arms up into the sheet and sort of shimmies the corners of the opening over her elbows, so that she’s all tucked in. She closes her eyes and lets herself go limp.
    â€œCool,” I say. I expect Lucy to jump down, but she doesn’t. “All right, I see how it works.” I say.