Christine Read Online Free PDF Page B

either of you.
    â€œYou wanted me in the college courses, I’m there.” He looked at his mother. “You wanted me in the chess club instead of the school band; okay, I’m there too. I’ve managed to get through seventeen years without embarrassing you in front of the bridge club or landing in jail.”
    They were staring at him wide-eyed, as if one of the kitchen walls had suddenly grown lips and started to talk.
    Arnie looked at them, his eyes odd and white and dangerous. “I’m telling you, I’m going to have this. This one thing.”
    â€œArnie. the insurance—” Michael began.
    â€œStop it!” Regina shouted. She didn’t want to start talking about the specific problems because that was the first step on the road to possible acceptance; she simply wanted to crush the rebellion under her heel, quickly and completely. There are moments when adults disgust you in ways they would never understand: I believe that, you know. I had one of those moments then, and it only made me feel worse. When Regina shouted at her husband, I saw her as both vulgar and scared, and because I loved her, I had never wanted to see her either way.
    Still I remained in the doorway, wanting to leave but unhealthily fascinated by what was going on—the first full-scale argument in the Cunningham family that I had ever seen, maybe the first ever. And it surely was a wowser, at least ten on the Richter scale.
    â€œDennis, you’d better leave while we thrash this out,” Regina said grimly.
    â€œYes,” I said. “But don’t you see, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. This car—Regina . . . Michael—if you could see it . . . it probably goes from zero to thirty in twenty minutes, if it moves at all—”
    â€œDennis! Go! ”
    I went.
    As I was getting into my Duster, Arnie came out the back door, apparently meaning to make good on his threat to leave. His folks came after him, now looking worried as well as pissed off. I could understand a little bit how they felt. It had been as sudden as a cyclone touching down from a clear blue sky.
    I keyed the engine and backed out into the quiet street. A lot had surely happened since the two of us had punched out at four o’clock, two hours ago. Then I had been hungry enough to eat almost anything (kelp quiche excepted). Now my stomach was so roiled I felt as if I would barf up anything I swallowed.
    When I left, the three of them were standing in the driveway in front of their two-car garage (Michael’s Porsche and Regina’s Volvo wagon were snuggled up inside— they got their cars, I remember thinking, a little meanly; what do they care), still arguing.
    That’s it, I thought, now feeling a little sad as well as upset. They’ll beat him down and LeBay will have his twenty-five dollars and that ’ 58 Plymouth will sit there for another thousand years or so. They had done similar things to him before. Because he was a loser. Even his parents knew it. He was intelligent, and when you got past the shy and wary exterior, he was humorous and thoughtful and . . . sweet, I guess, is the word I’m fumbling around for.
    Sweet, but a loser.
    His folks knew it as well as the machine-shop white-soxers who yelled at him in the halls and thumb-rubbed his glasses. They knew he was a loser and they would beat him down. That’s what I thought. But that time I was wrong.

3
    The Morning After
    I cruised by Arnie’ s house the next morning at 6:30 A.M. and just parked at the curb, not wanting to go in even though his mother and father would still be in bed—there had been too many bad vibes flying around in that kitchen the evening before for me to feel comfortable about the usual doughnut and coffee before work.
    Arnie didn’t come out for almost five minutes, and I started to wonder if maybe he hadn’t made good on his threat to just take off.