Calvin Read Online Free PDF Page B

something today?
    Me: Yes, I need to buy some winter hiking gear.
    Susie: Two of everything.
    Clerk: Certainly.
    Me (to Susie): Hobbes doesn’t need hiking gear. He has a fur coat, remember?
    Susie: I’m going with you, remember?
    Me: You said that just to bug me.
    Susie: You want me to call your parents and tell them what you’re doing?
    Me: You wouldn’t.
    She folded her arms.
    Me: Susie, this is going to be a seventeen-hour hike, maybe twenty. And you never know what conditions might be on the lake.
    Susie: Two of everything. You knew I wouldn’t let you go alone.
    I stood there with my mouth open, and while my mouth was open all these thoughts blew in.
    I remembered the exact moment when I realized I’d lost Susie. It was the beginning of eleventh grade, and we were standing at our lockers and she had just discovered the dead spider I’d put through her locker vent. She looked at it and she looked at me, but she didn’t get mad. I couldn’t figure out what she was thinking.
    Did she feel sorry for me? And in the next second, she was swarmed by her girlfriends. They were all around her and you could see she had friends and I didn’t.
    Aside from Hobbes getting washed to death, that was probably my loneliest moment of all time. I guess if I had any excuse for letting things get as far as they did, Bill, it was because when she said she was going with me across the lake, I felt all that loneliness go away. It all sounds pretty lame now, but at the time …
    Me: What’s the first thing you pack on a winter hike?
    Susie: Food? Toilet paper?
    Me: Confidence. Believing you can do it.
    Susie: And snow pants.
    Me: Proper clothing is essential. But even more essential is staying clearheaded and calm.
    Susie: Uh-oh.
    Me (ignoring her): Synthetic fabrics, polypropylene is the best. If they get wet, they still insulate.
    Susie: Oh, good. We’ll be insulated all the way to the bottom of the lake.
    Me: The lake is frozen up. Long underwear, synthetic or merino wool. Microfleece shirts, and we’ve already both got down parkas, hats, and mitts. We need good hiking boots, of course, waterproof and insulated, and big enough for two pairs of good socks. We need an extra pair of socks each, and probably another pair of mitts, and sunglasses.
    It took a while to try on the boots, but otherwise everything went pretty quickly. We picked out food, water, a small tent, a flashlight, a compass, a tiny first-aid kit, and down sleeping bags. I could tell the clerk was impressed with my vast knowledge. He just nodded and stacked everything beside the cash register.
    Me: We still need backpacks, but they’re pricey.
    Susie: Maybe we should take a sled.
    Somehow that felt like it had fate all over it, the idea of a sled. It made the whole thing seem happier.
    Me: Yeah, a sled! One of those, please, and a duffel bag and a rope.
    Hobbes: I’d like a scarf. A red one.
    We bought the gear, excluding the red scarf, and put on the clothes in the changing rooms.
    Hobbes paced around the store, and I could hear him sniffing hungrily at anything that looked like food. When I tried to get a look at him from the changing room, he was behind a rack of fleeces. When I came out of the changing room, he was lurking behind a display of cast-iron pots. Soon he was behind me again.
    Hobbes: If you’re a tiger, everything you need is already attached to you. But a friend would have bought me a red scarf.
    *   *   *
    When we left the store, I kept waiting for Susie to say just kidding or to disappear. Instead she helped me load up the trunk of the cab.
    Me: You’re not seriously coming.
    Susie: You just bought me all this stuff.
    Me: You can return it! Listen, you have to be the one who tells my mom that I’m at the bottom of the lake if I don’t come home.
    She got into the cab, and Hobbes and I got in, too, and I slammed the door.
    Me: Point Pelee Park, please.
    Cabdriver: