Stranger in Dadland Read Online Free PDF

with me?
    But then Beau said, “My ma pays me to help out.”
    Baby-sitting
Eric?
I didn’t get the joke and felt dumb. I hate that.
    We climbed the stairs of our building and Beau went into apartment 212 to change into his swim trunks. Now I knew where he lived. I wondered if he shared a room with Eric. If Beau’s apartment was like my dad’s, it had only two bedrooms.
    Uh-oh, I must’ve forgotten to close Dad’s apartment door. It was wide open! Mom was always ragging on me for stuff like that. But when I walked in, there was my dad on the phone.
    He saw me and hung up fast. “Where were you?” he demanded, shaking a finger at me. “You didn’t even leave a blasted note! I almost called the police!”
    “But I thought…I thought you said…,” I stammered.
    “And why didn’t you tell me Chris called? That was an important—a
very
important message!”
    “Well, I, I’m sorry, I just…”
    “Listen, mister,” Dad said, “if this visit is going to work out, you’re going to have to be
a lot
more responsible and considerate.”
    “I will. I just thought…”
    “How do you think it sounded when your mother called and I had to say I had no idea where you were? What did that make
me
look like? Huh?”
    “Mom called?” I asked, shocked. Mom
never
called here, ever! She’d made me promise about ninety times that
I’d call
her every day.
    Dad’s mouth clamped shut. He stopped shaking his finger at me and straightened up.
    “Mom called
here?
” I asked again.
    “Yeah, well,” Dad said, suddenly quiet.
    “Why?” I asked.
    “Well, she…” Dad’s eyes darted around. “I’ve got to get to my meeting. You leave a note if you’re going out, okay, Big Guy?” He mussed my hair on his way out the door, then he turned and said, “Give your mother a call. I’ll be back around six. We’ll get some dinner.”
    Six? What happened to fourish? I wondered.
    Beau appeared in the doorway, looking embarrassed. “Should I pretend I didn’t hear all that?” he asked.
    I shrugged like it was no biggie. “I gotta make a call.”
    “John?” Mom said in a very strange voice. “You okay?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Johnny, honey…” There was a long pause. “Liz doesn’t think I should tell you until you get home, but I don’t think that’s right.”
    “Tell me what?”
    “We have bad news, son. Oh, Johnny, it’s so sad. Will you be all right? Is your father there with you?”
    “What is it?” I nearly yelled.
    “He has a right to know,” Mom said, and I figured she was talking to Liz. I heard my mom sob.
    Then there was a scuffle sound. My sister’s voice came on the phone. “She went after a car. You know how she does—just out of nowhere…Oh, John, Ditz is dead.”
    That wasn’t true. That couldn’t be true.
    “She just shot out the door and there was no time to…” Liz was crying now. “It was so fast!”
    Ditz wasn’t dead. Why was Liz saying that? I don’t know what else we said before hanging up.
    I stood looking at the phone, but it seemed unreal—like a painting of a phone. And I felt far away from those voices who’d been crying. Light-years from what they’d said about Ditz. I don’t know how long I stood there.
    I finally left the kitchen. Beau was channel surfing.
He
– didn’t look particularly real either. “What’s up?” he asked.
    “Nothing,” I said, and walked past him to the guest room. I got my trunks out of the drawer. I felt like I was moving in slow motion, as if the air in the room had turned thick and I had to push through it.
    I changed. Put my clothes on the chair. Got a towel. Wentstep by step out the door and down the stairs. Nothing looked right. The sun was too bright. The water in the pool was too blue. I looked back. Beau was bounding after me like a dog. Like Ditz. Leggy and eager and dumb.
    I dove in. Sank to the bottom.
    It’s all my fault, I thought. Ditz didn’t understand about vacations. She didn’t know I was coming back; she only knew