Calamity and Other Stories

Calamity and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

Book: Calamity and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF
Author: Daphne Kalotay
Tags: Fiction, Short Stories (Single Author)
dissatisfied.
    “A boy drowned right about here,” Valerie said. She shrugged a shoulder and managed to look somehow embarrassed. “He got caught in the seaweed. There’s parts out here where it’s like an underground jungle, a whole underwater tropical rain forest, and if you get caught in it, the weeds grab your legs and hold you under.” Valerie’s pale eyes shot me a challenging look. “That’s why my mom won’t let me swim out here.”
    “I can swim wherever I want.”
    “Well, fine, you may be allowed to swim wherever you want, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Valerie gave a little huff. “Why do you keep that towel wrapped around your legs?”
    I’d heard it on commercials: “Sensitive skin.”
    Valerie showed up at the cottage every day, and Dad and Shirley were always there to smile and nod and make sure that I joined her. Here I was, ready for my first summer romance, saddled with an eleven-year-old who for all I knew still believed in Santa Claus. Though my romantic fantasies were embarrassingly ignorant (even after what I’d learned in science class, the most I could imagine was a prolonged kiss, unaware of the fact that tongues were involved), they made no allowances for preteens. I pictured myself with some big-breasted girl, walking hand in hand to buy ice cream, licking from each other’s cones.
    Instead I had scrawny Valerie. We swam, canoed, and played cards on the old dock, which Valerie preferred to the communal one she and her neighbors shared in Hanlam’s Bay. She showed me the cool, shady area behind her parents’ place where she dug for worms, and we went fishing regularly. This was way out in the middle of nowhere, don’t forget; there weren’t any other kids my age nearby. If I were back home, Mack and I would have been riding our bikes to the pool, or playing Atari, or exploring the tunnels under the library without our mothers’ knowing. I took opportunities to remind Valerie of this. I made sure she understood that our friendship would never have occurred had my father not met Shirley, my mother not—after threatening to use a razor blade on herself— been sent off to her parents, and I not been dragged to some small cottage where I knew no one.
    At least twice a week we rode our bikes into town to see a movie at the Ascott Theatre, a dilapidated establishment that appeared to be owned by a grim-looking man and his dog. The dog, a Doberman, wore a spiked collar and barked at anyone who entered the premises, which explained the low turnout. That and the fact that the movies weren’t current; they were old ones, sometimes classics but most of the time just old. You needed a car to get to the multiplex, three towns over.
    In the lobby of the theater was a brown card table, on top of which sat a fishbowl. Propped against it was a scrawled notice that asked patrons to place their business cards in the bowl. WIN A THOUSAND BUCKS, read a separate, menacing sign below. No “dollars” and no exclamation point—more like an order that the grim man and the angry dog were there to ensure. “Winner selected end of August,” a lowercase jotting concluded. Even then I didn’t understand how they could be giving away a thousand dollars when the theater was in such bad shape. The red vinyl seats had huge holes in them, and the screen was missing a curtain on one side.
    The fishbowl was nearly empty in early July, but a week later a few business cards had been added. Valerie and I checked up on the bowl every time we went to the theater. Valerie would pick out a card to see who went there besides us. She usually made fun of whoever’s card it was. “Charles Lampert, Chiropractor. Just call him Mr. Backcracker. That’s what a chiropractor does; they have you lie down, and then they sit on you, to crack your back. Good old fat Charles Lampert.” She tossed the card back in the bowl.
    “Get your prissy hands outta there.” That was what the grim man usually said. Other times
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