Cuts Like a Knife Read Online Free PDF

it. “Is it okay if I work on my project?”
    â€œSure,” he said. “I’m going to be here for probably another forty-five minutes.” He didn’t ask me why I had nothing better to do than hang out at school on a Saturday night. Maybe he figured if he asked me, I might ask him.
    I wondered sometimes why he hung out in the music department so much after school hours. Didn’t he have a girlfriend? He wasn’t bad-looking for a guy his age. He was tall. He wasn’t fat. He had all his original hair. It was half gray, but he didn’t wear it in some kind of dorky ponytail in the back or anything.
    Maybe he was thinking the same think about me, wondering why I didn’t have a girlfriend. I wasn’t ugly, and I was fairly tall. Okay, so I didn’t have a lot of muscles, but I wasn’t some skinny geek boy either. And I took a shower every day and put on clean clothes. My mother said when I got a bit older, girls would be all over me. What else was she supposed to say? She was my mother.
    I got my folder from the back of the room and plugged a set of headphones into my favorite keyboard. Then I put my music on the stand, except there really wasn’t much music, because I’d been stuck on this dumb assignment for more than a week.
    I wanted to write a song for Mac. Stupid, I know. But I couldn’t make it sound right, and the harder I tried, the more it just sucked. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what it had felt like when she kissed me. No girl had ever had a mouth so soft and warm. I thought about my skin next to hers, and suddenly my fingers were moving over the keys.
    I found a pencil, and for the next forty-five minutes I played and transcribed and Mac’s song came to life. I pulled off the headphones just as Mr. Hanson came over to me.
    â€œProgress?” he asked.
    I nodded. “Yeah.”
    â€œSorry I have to kick you out,” he said.
    â€œIt’s okay.” I stuffed the music in my folder before he could look at what I’d done. I wasn’t ready to show it to anyone yet. “I’m pretty much finished.”
    I put my folder back in my slot and hung the headphones inside the cupboard. Mr. Hanson pulled on his jacket, grabbed his backpack and carefully picked up something wrapped in a green plastic bag. “Can you hold this while I lock up?” he asked, holding out the bag.
    â€œSure,” I said.
    â€œDon’t drop it,” he said lightly, though there was an edge of seriousness to his voice.
    â€œWhat is this? Our final exam?” I asked as he took out his keys.
    He looked at me over his shoulder and grinned. “No, something way more valuable than that. Long John Baldry’s 1971 album, It Ain’t Easy —the original, not the reissue, and vinyl, not cd.”
    I almost dropped the record. It was a good thing it was dark and he couldn’t see my face, because he would have known something was up. “Where, uh, where did you get it?” I asked, and I was surprised at how normal my voice sounded, because I didn’t feel normal at all. I already knew what he was going to say.

Chapter Nine
    â€œYour friend Mac gave it to me. I guess she found it in some old things that had belonged to her grandmother. She knew how much I like bluesmen like Baldry, so she asked if I wanted it. It didn’t mean anything to her.”
    I was glad to hand the album back to him, because my hands were shaking so badly it would have ended up on the parking lot pavement in another minute.
    â€œI, uh, I gotta go,” I said.
    â€œGood night, Daniel,” he said. “See you Monday.”
    I walked away from him across the parking lot in long strides and then blindly down the street until I was out of sight of the school. Then I stopped and sat on the curb.
    I couldn’t breathe, and every part of me was shaking—my hands, my arms, my legs. My teeth would have been banging together if I