Come Destroy Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

couldn’t look up. He knew what to call it. It was a
crush.
He didn’t know what to do with it. In a minute she would say something to him and he would be worse off than Mr. Crocker. He was acting like Mr. Crocker right now, he thought, like the village idiot.
    How could a little thing like borrowing a pencil be such a big thing? How could he be sitting in the whole world in Azrael, Vermont, and be making a big thing out of a little thing like borrowing a pencil? Oh, God, it was a tense moment, he knew that.
    “Clos-ing ti-yam.”
    O.K. Get up. Go and get the goddamn pencil and say you were glad to lend it and forget it. Go home. O.K. Get up! He closed the book and put the yellow pad under it and pushed back his chair. She was right behind him then.
    She said, “Thank you so much.”
    They began to walk. She was shorter. He had wondered if she would be shorter, and she had heels too. She said, “My name’s Jill Latham.”
    “Charlie Wright,” he managed to mutter. Couldn’t he just speak it out? She said, “Pardon me,” and he repeated his name, and she said, “Are you at the university?”
    “No. Next year I plan to go to Harvard.”
    “I thought you were at the university.”
    “No.”
    “You’re here almost every night, aren’t you?”
    “Just about. Yes.”
    “Well!” she said, and Mrs. Whitmore called good night to them and they were out in the summer night, going down the stone steps. The stars were out.
    She said, “Do you like to read, Charlie Wright?”
    The way she said it. His two names at once. He watched the steps carefully. It was foolish, but he thought if he didn’t he might fall.
    “Yes. All the time.”
    “All
the time?”
    “Well, no. You know. I like to read.” Great, he thought, great dialogue. He said, “You must too.”
    “Oh, yes. My, yes. I read and read, but not
all
the time.” She laughed. “You know what Emily Dickinson said: ‘God permits industrious angels afternoons to play.’ “
    Charlie didn’t know what to say, and he laughed hoarsely. His laughter sounded vacant and strange. He said, “Yes,” and they were at the bottom of the steps, standing still.
    “I live over on Deel Street,” she said. “If you’re going that way, we might walk along together.”
    “Sure,” he said. “Good.”
    At first he was disappointed and unsure that it was as glorious as he had thought. He thought, Well, here I am walking along beside her. So what? And he thought, This is nothing. This is nothing at all. He had a very clear picture of the situation, Charlie Wright, age sixteen, walking home with the woman who ran the Red Clover Bookshop. That, in itself, was nothing. The street lights were bright, it was a hot night, and from the fields over near the creek beyond the library the crickets clacked their persistent songs. Nothing special.
    Then they turned off Broad and went down Evans toward Deel and the street was darker and they were not talking. Then he was nervous, and he felt not glad to be taller than she was, but clumsy and oafish, like a giraffe. Then it was the way it was before.
    “For a long time,” she said, “I have walked this street alone. Sometimes it’s hard.”
    “Don’t you know anyone?” Charlie asked.
    “Know anyone?” she answered.
    There was nothing he could say to that. He did not even understand it. Suddenly he wished he were more mature. He was a kid. Just a kid.
    “It’s a street that reminds me of many streets.
Many
streets.”
    “I guess they’re all the same,” he said, wondering what was all the same, what he was talking about.
    “From city to city, town to town, country to country,” she answered. “Odd. Yes, odd.”
    “Yes,” he said.
    She said, “My, yes.”
    He was surprised to hear his own voice blurt out, “Well, what do you do?”
    “Do?”
    “I mean with your time.”
    “Do?” She gave a little laugh. “Do?” she said. “I keep my shop. I eat. I read. I stay out of trouble. That’s what I do.”
    “What