Lost Between Houses Read Online Free PDF Page A

bomb out either. Funny thing about that book, though. The textbook. Like the minute I got out of the exam, it went from being the most important book in the world, right in the centre of the universe, to just a pile of pages with doodles all over them. It even
looked
different. I brought it home though. I was too superstitious to leave it lying around on a windowsill at school. I was afraid it might get pissed off at me and arrange things so I flunked. You can never be too careful.
    Next day, we packed up the car and headed north to our cottage. The old man stayed in the Clinic. Which was just fine with me.
    It was about a three-hour drive to get there and we always stopped at the same place for something to eat. It was a little roadside joint with fabulous hamburgers. Some local guy ran it but he turned it into a big deal, every summer it got bigger, more kids working on the grill, pretty girls taking your order in the parking lot.
    “How come we never go anywhere else?” I said as I burst out of the car. It wasn’t really a question, I was just happy to beout of school and I wanted to talk. But Harper was a little grumpy that day.
    “I don’t know,” he grunted, “good burgers, I guess.” There was no point asking what was bugging him, he’d just tell you to buzz off. He wasn’t like me that way. I can’t keep anything to myself. I mean I find it physically difficult to keep my mouth shut.
    Anyway. Out in the parking lot, the old lady opened a thermos of vodka and orange juice, she’d whipped it up before she left home, and poured herself a drink. She opened the car door and left it open. She had this crazy idea that you could drink in your car as long as you had one foot on the ground. She kept the car door open so she could get her leg out extra fast in case a cop walked by. Jesus. What these folks wouldn’t do for a noggin. Like I mean, what with the old man getting soused in the living room, night after night, you’d think this wasn’t such a hot idea. Everybody walking around in a fucking blur. Getting pissed off at stuff they couldn’t even remember in the morning. One night when I was little, like in grade seven, he called me downstairs to look at my math homework. Talk about looking for trouble. Course it was all screwed up, mistakes all over the place and next thing I know is he hurls the notebook into the air, it’s flapping there like some kind of bird and I’m running for cover.
    I sort of daydreamed that he’d stay in the Clinic all summer, which I know is a bad thing to admit, but at least nobody’d have to be nervous around him. No more walking around like you’re in a minefield, wondering what’s going to set him off, a wet towel on the bed, borrowing a comb and not putting it back. I mean get this, one morning I get up for school, I’m twelve years old and I can’t find my comb. So I go into his bedroom and I pick up his off the night table and I wander around the house,combing my hair, looking here and there, in this mirror, that mirror, I don’t know, I’m twelve remember, and next thing I know he comes charging into my bedroom, fit to be tied, and he wants to know where his comb is. So I say I don’t know. He asks me if I borrowed it and stupidly I tell him the truth, I say, yeah I did. Well that just sets him off. He just about has a fucking stroke right there in his business suit. I can smell the Old Spice when he comes close to me. I can also feel my behind contracting violently.
    “The next time you take my comb,” he says, just shaking, “I’m going to give you a beating!”
    And the thing is, he meant it. He really did.
    Anyway. Enough about him.
    Point is, after awhile, you wish people like that would just stay away.
    Anyway, we’re driving north. We get to Huntsville, we go through town real slow, I’m looking this way, that way, for my summer pals, Greg with the bad teeth, and his sexy sister. I see Mr Jewel who owns the shoe store; Chip Peterson who’s good at