Craig Lancaster - Edward Adrift Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the driveway of Donna’s house, across the street from mine, and I waved good-bye to her and Victor and Kyle. They moved to Boise because Victor’s job with the railroad got transferred there.
    I can’t say I was surprised. I mean, I can actually say the words “I was surprised”—that’s easy—but I wouldn’t believe them if I did. Victor was talking about the possibility all the way back in October 2010. It was October 31, which I remember because we were handing out Halloween candy to the neighborhood kids when he said something about it to Donna and she nodded. I badly wanted to ask why he would even consider moving to Boise, Idaho, and leaving this great neighborhood, but I didn’t say anything. I just wished hard that it wouldn’t happen, and you can see what wishing leads to—nothing good. By March, all that remained was for Kyle to finish up school here so they could pack and move.
    I’ve noted before that it’s silly to think that time actually speeds up. It doesn’t. It’s just an illusion. But it sure seems to move quickly when something you don’t want to happen is imminent (I love the word “imminent”). June came so fast, figuratively speaking. My three best friends—my only three friends, really—left town, and I’ve been sad ever since. I talk to them on the phone, but it’s not the same. I don’t like talking on the telephone. I also exchange e-mail with Donna and Kyle, but that’s not the same, either. Donna is the best friend I’ve ever had. She really knows how to call me on my bullshit without being a beeyotch (a word I learned from Kyle, and one I still don’t quite understand). Seeing her words on my computer screen is better than nothing, I’ll concede, but I would prefer that I could see her in person every day, like I used to. I liked how her hair would get lighter in the summertime and the freckles on her nose would look more pronounced, even though all of that was just a trick of the light. I liked how she walked really fast and stiff when she was angry. I liked how she could make me smile by smiling at me, when everybody else who smiles at me just makes me nervous.
    As for Kyle, I met him on October 15, 2008, and so I’ve known him for 1,148 days of the 4,684 days he’s been alive. (That means Kyle was born on February 9, 1999, making him twelve years, nine months, and twenty-nine days old.) I’ve known Kyle for more than 24 percent of his life. That means I’m invested, and that’s why it hurts that I don’t see him every day. He’s been gone from here for 187 days, and that’s 187 days of getting smarter, growing taller, and becoming closer to a man. I used to measure Kyle’s height once a month along the side of my little garage, because I could plainly see that he was growing fast, but what my eyeballs told me was no match for solid data. The data is still there on the garage, written in blue ballpoint pen for anyone who wants to see it, but the last measurement happened on June 1 of this year. Between March 1, 2009, when we took the first measurement, and June 1, 2011, when we took the last, Kyle went from 4 feet 10 ⅜ inches tall to 5 feet 6 7 ⁄ 16 inches tall—taller than his mom. It’s a shame I can’t tell you how tall he is now. I’ll never paint that garage again, so I at least have the measurements we took to remember that he was here.
    I’ve tried to blame Victor for my friends being gone, because if Donna hadn’t met Victor, she wouldn’t have married him and there would have been no railroad job in Boise to take them away from here. The problem with blaming Victor is that it forces me to assume that nothing else would have changed, and I’m not comfortable assuming anything. That Dr. Buckley retired and I lost my job go to show that a lot has changed, not just the presence of Victor and his job in Boise. I prefer facts, and while it is a fact that Victor’s job led my friends away from me, it’s also a fact that Donna and Kyle love