How to Save a Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

leather, with a matching chair and the thing you put your feet on—I forget what it’s called. Real leather. My mother showed me in the furniture store one time the difference between real and fake. Once you touch and smell and even hear them both, you never forget, and afterward what’s fake stands out, even if you never noticed it before. The living-room furniture in Kent’s apartment was vinyl. If you sat on it very long, especially in warm weather, your rear would be damp when you got up. A lot of things about Kent were fake.
    In front of the couch here at Robin’s is a low coffee table with a vase of real flowers and some magazines I’ve never heard of, with names that all start with the , like The Economist and The New Yorker and The Atlantic . There’s no TV.
    When Robin comes back with my water and finds me holding The Economist , she says, “I know you told me you’re not much of a reader, but we’ve got lots of books all over the house if you change your mind. Jill’s dad had a little bit of an addiction.”
    Then I notice the built-in shelves on both sides of the fireplace, the books behind glass doors. I set the magazine down. “Is there a TV upstairs?”
    “No, this is it.”
    I look around the room again, nervous.
    “Oh!” She laughs and goes over—quick steps, everything she does is quick—to a dark red wooden cabinet against the wall and opens its doors. “Here you go. We hide it when we’re not watching.”
    At Kent’s apartment we were never not watching it. If the TV is off and there’s no radio, the silence is so heavy. It makes you scared.
    Robin hands me the remote and looks ready to cry again. I don’t know what to say. Whatever I would think of is the wrong thing, probably, the way I kept saying the wrong thing to Jill at breakfast and it was just like my mother told me: I make people uncomfortable. Actually what she said was “You give them the creeps. Just act right.”
    I close my eyes to think.
    “I’m sorry,” she says, and I open my eyes. She’s pressing her hands to her cheeks. Every move she makes is part of the puzzle I’m putting together: her voice, her hair, her quick steps, the way her hands move, plus all of our e-mails and the way she started writing “Mandy, Dear,” instead of “Dear Mandy” in the last few weeks. It’s adding up to something, finally. “You’re exhausted. I’ll try to contain my excitement and leave you alone for a while. I’ll run up and get the sheets on the bed. I should have had it all done, but I decided at the last minute to get you new bedding, and I wanted to wash everything first…. Okay. You rest.” She’s lowered her voice to a whisper. “I can’t get over how tiny you are.”
    She goes upstairs. It’s the first time I’ve been alone since the cab dropped me off at the train station in Omaha.
    I’m here. I did this. When I sent my first e-mail to Robin, I only had a small hope she would reply; and after she replied, I had only a small hope she would agree to everything the way I wanted it; and when she agreed, I only had a small hope she wouldn’t change her mind. And here I am, all of those small hopes getting me from one day to the next, the way they have my whole life.
    In the pocket of my dress is another small hope—the white sticker from Alex’s magazine that has his address on it. I peeled it off while he was in the bathroom.
    When will you be coming through Denver again? I’ll write. We can meet for coffee .
    I have to keep thinking of my future.
    The only little worry mixed in with my hopes is Jill. Robin never said very much about her in the e-mails. At breakfast, after Jill said she looked like her father, I asked her about him, and she wouldn’t say anything. Robin had already told me some and in a way I felt like I knew him, but I wanted to make conversation with Jill. She changed the subject. Then I offered her some of my pancakes. She made a face and said she didn’t like pancakes. What kind of