Calamity and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

bay had formed, with sand soft as mud. It felt like a silk pillow when I waded there, bending down to catch guppies in my hands. Where the water ended, the ground was dark and mossy, with frogs that sat there and never blinked. To the other side of the dock, the shoreline was pebbles, the kind that call for rubber soles. Some nights Dad and Shirley would build bonfires there, and I’d hear Shirley say how she wished
her
Geoff were with us; she was sure we would get along. In blatant inconsideration, she had named her son Geoff, too. At least his was spelled with a “J.” He was only eight and lived with his dad in Schenectady.
    I just left the two of them alone. I read mysteries and swam, and worried about my body. In yellow swim trunks, I would wrap a long towel around my waist to walk to the dock. My father laughed at me, and Shirley said, “Oh, honey.”
    I was lying on the dock one afternoon in early July, sun-drying after a swim, when a stranger caught me towel-less. “How much’ll you give for these worms?”
    I quickly covered myself. A few feet away was a suntanned girl, her wispy brown hair pulled back in a plastic clip. She was still skinny the way little kids are, legs like sticks, over which she wore denim shorts with turtle patches on the pockets. Her flip-flops were orange and her tank suit green, her bony shoulders poking out from the straps. She seemed a whole world younger than the girls in seventh grade, who wore eyeshadow and sometimes bras. “Your dad said I’d find you down here,” she told me. “He said you might be interested.”
    “In what?”
    “Worms. You fish, don’t you? I’ve seen you fishing from the dock, and in your canoe. I live up there.” She pointed vaguely upstream. “Hanlam’s Bay. See that little gray house by the communal dock? Next to the one with the motorboat. That’s where I live. With the grass and trees up top. We’re neighbors.” She tilted her head and squinted at me. “So how about it? You want some worms?”
    As she well knew, worms were a hot commodity in that summer haven. The only place to buy any was Arno’s Live Bait, which entailed a trip into town and a venture into the dark, raw-smelling rowhouse that was Arno’s home and business. I’d never actually seen Arno, and possibly he no longer existed, for the enterprise appeared to be entirely in the hands of his descendants. There were innumerable Arno juniors: picking their noses out on the stoop, swatting flies on the front porch, playing tag in the living room, or watching TV in the kitchen, where one of them would open an enormous refrigerator to fetch you your half-price maggots. All had the same pale freckles, thin brown hair, and sweaty faces and appeared to never leave their crowded home. They were their own gang, and I had never liked dealing with them. This girl seemed to know it. “Where’d you get yours?” I asked her.
    “It’s a secret.”
    I let out a bored breath. “How much you want for them?”
    The girl held her head up high and said, “They’re free if you’ll take me out in your canoe.”
    From the veranda above, my father stood with Shirley, hands around each other’s waists, nodding down at me.
    That was how it started. I think it wasn’t until we were already out in the boat, spearing plump earthworms on hooks, that we thought to ask each other’s names. Hers was Valerie. We sat there under the four-o’clock sun and guided our fishing rods patiently.
    “How old are you?” I asked.
    “Eleven.”
    I wanted to tell Valerie that I had entered a world to which she was not yet privy, one where you had to change classrooms and teachers for each subject, and clothes for gym. Some kids smoked in the bathrooms, and my best friend, Mack, had even procured a few
Playboy
s, which had been passed around covertly and scrutinized reverently.
    But with her flat chest and narrow hips Valerie did not even seem worthy of such information. I just sighed and tried to look