Bullyville Read Online Free PDF Page A

him when he moved in with Caroline.
    Once, Mom said she was glad that Dad’s parents were dead. They’d both been killed in a car wreck not long before I was born. She’d liked them, they were sweet and kind, and it was fortunate they hadn’t lived to see this. I didn’t think it was so fortunate. I wished I had more grandparents. I wishedI had all the family it was possible to have.
    Every so often, Mom would haul herself into the living room and sit straight across from me and stare into my eyes and say, “I know this is hard for you, baby. I want you to be able to talk about it to me. You need to talk about it. We’re going through this together.”
    But what was I supposed to say? I missed Dad, and the whole Twin Towers thing made me feel terrified and sick. If I said that, how was it going to help Mom? So I didn’t talk about it, I got used to not talking about it, and after a while I sort of liked not talking about it. It made me feel in control, grown-up. Manly. I thought that my keeping my mouth shut was what Dad would have wanted.
    I kept hoping Mom would get better, but she seemed to be getting worse. She almost never wanted to leave the house. She sent me out to the convenience store—the nearest one I could walk to—for small grocery items. The supermarket delivered, and we ordered a lot of takeout. Chinese, Indian, Mexican—we didn’t eat much,anyway. I Googled her behavior—her symptoms—on the internet. That was how I found out that Mom might be suffering from PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. I don’t think it helped her to know that she’d just been a few degrees (my fever!) away from getting killed, herself.
    She stopped driving, and in the back of my mind I was beginning to worry that she was becoming a serious problem I was going to have to deal with. Should I tell Gran or my aunts? Mom got dressed for their visits, which meant that she hadn’t totally run off the rails. And even if she hadn’t gotten dressed, even if she’d greeted them in her nightgown, in bed, they would have accepted that, too.
    And so when it turned out that Dr. Bratton was coming to see us, and it seemed like the first thing that had gotten Mom excited, or even interested, in weeks, I felt I had to get with the program. Fine, let the dude come visit. Let him get a good look at Mom in her bathrobe, with her hair unwashed. Let him see what basket cases we were.Let him satisfy his sick curiosity about our semi-tragedy. And then let him regret the fact that, in his letter, he’d mentioned the possibility of my going to Baileywell Preparatory Academy on a full scholarship, a new and specially earmarked endowment from an anonymous donor.
    In five minutes he’d be telling himself that he hadn’t really made an offer, hadn’t promised or committed himself. It had only been a possibility that was, after all, impossible. He could tell the anonymous donor that I was academically unqualified, that it wouldn’t be good for me or the school to admit me at this point. Maybe they could keep looking until they found some worthy, high-achieving kid whose dad had been an undocumented restaurant worker at Windows on the World.
    Â 
    On the morning of Dr. Bratton’s visit, Mom practically skipped downstairs in pressed jeans and a bright red sweater. Her hair and face were shining. She looked like a mother in a TV commercial,waking up early to prepare her family big bowls of the hottest, steamingest, healthiest breakfast cereal.
    â€œDr. Bratton! Come in,” my mother said. “Would you like some coffee?”
    I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was surprised, and scared. And the part that scared me most was this: Ever since my dad got killed, Mom would say, “I know people talk about good things coming out of bad things. But I wish someone could show me one good thing that’s coming out of this. I don’t count