Saints of Augustine Read Online Free PDF Page A

house in days. “Did you eat lunch out?” he asked, trying to sound casual.
    â€œMe?” Who else? “No. I ate here.”
    Charlie didn’t believe this, either. There hadn’t been anything to eat in the house, except maybe cornflakes. “You need to eat, Dad.”
    â€œI ate,” he said to the paper. “Don’t harass me, son.”
    â€œWell, I’ve got to get cleaned up. Then I’ll make us some spaghetti, okay?”
    There was such a long stretch of silence, Charlie started to wonder if he’d been heard. Then, as if he didn’t even know what they were talking about, his father said, “Okay, Charlie.”
    Â 
    He showered, spending a long time under the spray with his eyes closed, the warm water batting against his forehead. I wish, I wish, I wish , he thought. I wish Mom was here. She’d put Dad back on track. Though that didn’t really make any sense, because his father wouldn’t be in the shape he was in if his mother hadn’t died. I wish I’d spent more time on the court this summer. I wish I’d never laid eyes on Derrick Harding. Why in the hell did I ever get involved with that guy?
    Of course he knew why. Despite his ability to play a pretty good game, he didn’t fit in with thejocks—at least, not with those guys who talked about nothing but sports and walked around like they held the deed to the school in their hand. And since his mother had died, he wasn’t exactly in the mood to meet new people. He had a—what was the word? He’d learned it in English this past year. Dearth . He had a dearth of friends. Guys just to hang out with. Not that he wanted an entourage. In fact, one good friend—a best friend, someone he could really talk to—would probably have been enough to keep him from sucking up to a creep like Derrick Harding.
    Someone like Sam Findley.
    But that friendship was over. Charlie didn’t even know why. He and Sam had been best friends since they were nine, and then one day their friendship had just…stopped. Sam was the one who had ended it, and he’d never explained why. They both lived in the same neighborhood, they went to the same school, but for over a year now, since before Charlie’s mother first got sick, they hadn’t spoken a word to each other.
    Charlie finished showering and pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts. As he stood in the kitchen boiling the spaghetti, he thought about going down to the court at the end of their neighborhood and shooting some baskets. But his father went back to vodka and orange juice before they started eating, and by the time Charlie was loading the dishwasher, he’d downed at least three. He started making little remarks to the news program on TV (“You think so?” “I doubt it!” “Oh, come on, where’s the hard evidence for that ?”), and Charlie got so irritated that he lost his energy and just retreated to his room.
    He’d earned a little unwinding time, hadn’t he? He’d worked for eight hours, dealt with Wade, brought home the bacon—more than enough crap for one day. He had his unwinding routine perfected: He cranked open his window, set the little gray fan on the sill, then dug his pipe and lighter and film container of pot from the bottom drawer of his nightstand. Crouching in front of the fan, he lit up and puffed, exhaling smoke that was immediately sucked outside.
    Not long after that, he was lying flat on his bed,listening to music and thinking about the girl he’d seen coming out of Gatorland. He rolled over onto his hand.
    Then he remembered Kate: He was supposed to have called her an hour ago. He scrambled for the phone on his nightstand and dialed.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œHi,” he said. “It’s me.”
    â€œI thought you were going to call earlier than this.”
    â€œSorry. My dad made me do all this stuff around the house