Learning to Swim Read Online Free PDF

realized I would do anything to protect this child.
“Je ne te blesserai jamais,”
I whispered to him. “I will never hurt you. Never.”
    And I knew I wouldn’t be marching this boy down to the police station, not today, and possibly never.

T HE BOY WAS LOOKING THOUGHTFULLY AT THE SLICE OF old, cold pizza he was holding, as if considering eating it. Time for breakfast.
    Even if I had run his clothes through the washer and hung them up to dry last night, they’d still be wet. I searched through my dresser and pulled out my snuggest Lycra sports shorts and tiniest T-shirt, and knotted two bandannas around his waist to hold up the shorts. They came halfway down his legs like baggy pantaloons, making him look like a tiny pirate. I turned him to let him look at himself in the mirror on the back of my bedroom door. His mouth twisted with amusement, and for a moment he looked like anyone’s kid, playing dress-up.
    I led him by the hand down my narrow stairs into the kitchen, where he seemed to think a picnic table with a plastic-coated checkered tablecloth made a fine dining room table. He emptied his bowl of Cheerios and looked at me wide-eyed, like the hungry orphan in
Oliver!
I know my Dickens—both movie and novel—and correctly concluded he wanted more. We negotiated: more Cheerios if he would give the half-eaten pizza slice to Tiger.
    I watched him munch his cereal, and hoped if he had any food allergies he’d be smart enough to turn down whatever he was allergic to. While he was finishing his second bowl, I retrieved our wet clothes from yesterday and dumped them in the portable washing machine. I wheeled it to the kitchen sink, attached it to the faucet, and switched it on.
    What now? I could try to coax Paul into talking or I could do more research to see if I had missed anything. We headed upstairs and were just stepping into my office when my phone rang. I jumped, and Paul scurried into the bedroom.
    It was my brother, Simon.
    “Hey, kiddo, what’s up?” he asked. I don’t think being eleven months younger warrants being called kiddo, but I let him get away with it. Most of the time. Simon had managed our family much better than I had: he had obediently gone to Vanderbilt, where our father teaches, and majored in pre-law. But when he was supposed to be sowing wild oats on senior spring break he’d slipped off to take the police exam in Orlando, and after graduation had accepted a job there, thereby managing to do exactly what he wanted after being comfortably supported through university. After the initial shock, everyone decided this was a singularly clever way to acquire experience before law school, and Simon lets them think what they want. What they don’t know is that he’s quietly building a second career as an artist, selling a few pieces here and there, and has no intention of going to law school.
    But when I landed a scholarship to Oregon State and wanted to skip my last year of high school, it was Simon who calmed our mother and convinced our father to sign the admission papers—although I would have forged them if I’d had to. So if anyone comes close to understanding me, it’s Simon. He’d known I’d had to get away. Just as he knows I need to live in this mountain town more than a thousand long miles from Nashville.
    “Not much,” I said. “Work, dog, house. Rode up Keene Valley. Hiked Algonquin.” I’d taken Simon up two of the Adirondack mountains; I hadn’t yet summited all forty-six, but I was marking them off, one by one.
    He laughed. “Hey, it’s a tough life you lead up there in the boonies.”
    “Yeah, well, have fun down there while you can, before it gets so hot you can barely breathe.”
    “At least we don’t have black flies.”
    “No, just cockroaches so big they fly.” I hesitated a moment. “Hey, Simon, what do you do at work if you find a lost kid and no parents show up?”
    He answered without hesitation—like me, he can switch gears quickly. “Basically