Steinbeck’s Ghost Read Online Free PDF

know why I stay inside so much. Thank God for the pool.”
    They took their sodas to the front porch and stared at the quiet, empty, and way-too-bright streets. It was hot again, and the afternoon wind was up and strong, but it felt good to be outside.
    They spent the rest of the afternoon dreaming up a video game called Camazotz. In this world everything was gray and brown and blue, very dark, but perfect. The houses, the children, their games, all the same. Just like the book.
    The heroes of the game, naturally, were two thirteen-year- old boys—each dressed in outrageous and colorful T-shirts and big goofy hats. They wandered through Camazotz with their Plink- Plunkers and Plink- Plunked the houses and children and balls, trying to locate hidden passages that led to cool and colorful and exciting worlds. There was a hidden world under every boring house.
    They sketched five levels of the game—an underwater world, an inside- out world, a backward world, a world without gravity, and a world in which dogs were the masters—and they each shot soda out their nose countless times from laughing. They didn’t play a single minute of a real video game. It was the best afternoon with Hil since school had started.

    Travis’s parents knew they’d screwed up. Big- time. When they came home at ten on Thursday night, Travis already in bed and reading, he could hear how sorry they were by the way they rushed up the stairs together, then opened his door slowly and quietly. They smiled big, fake, soft smiles. Travis stared at them.
    “We’re sorry, kiddo,” his dad said. He sat on the edge of the bed and ruffled Travis’s hair. “We should have called, we know, should have told you we’d be late. I know, totally unfair. But I was in this big emergency meeting, and your mom had this killer report to do, so she just stayed. And … well …”
    “That’s right, honey,” his mom said. She leaned over his dad’s shoulder. “We’re really, really sorry.”
    It was like being in the hospital; his parents were doctors telling him he had an incurable disease.
    “We know it’s been crazy lately,” his dad said, patting the bed. “And we haven’t been around as much, and, well, and …”
    “And?” Travis said. It was the meanest question he had ever asked anyone.
    “And tomorrow,” his mom said, “tomorrow everything’s clear, the slate is clean. Your dad and I will be home by six, won’t we? And we’ll go to Sheila’s for burgers, we haven’t been there in ages. And this weekend we’ll all hang out together. Hey, let’s spend the day at the pool on Saturday. Won’t that be great?”
    “Okay,” Travis said. He said this with a little sulk in his voice. He was enjoying making his parents pay, and he certainly wasn’t going to tell them where he’d been while they were out. “But you promise. Sheila’s, and the pool, too?”
    “Absolutely,” his father said. “That’s my kiddo. Now, you get some sleep.”
    His parents said nothing about the library books scattered on the bed.

    On Friday night, as promised, they went to Sheila’s, a funky bar and restaurant in Oldtown, where Travis’s dad had been a bartender before his new job. The burgers at Sheila’s were the best, and the French fries were simply unexplainable they were so good—French fries from another planet.
    Sheila, the owner, made Travis a Roy Rogers with five cherries on a plastic sword; “his usual,” Sheila called it, and even though Travis thought it was a little kids’ drink, he still loved it. Some things shouldn’t change. Travis and his parents used to eat dinner here every Sunday night— always burgers and fries—and everyone at Sheila’s was happy to see them.
    Saturday at the pool started out great. It was warm, but not as hot as it had been that week. A thin layer of feathery clouds softened the sky, and the wind didn’t come up in the afternoon. Tey took a picnic lunch and the newspaper and some books, almost like the