Tell Me One Thing Read Online Free PDF Page B

She offers him something. “Do you want to know why I looked that way when I came to Buffalo?”
    “I’m afraid to say yes,” Jamie tells her without taking his eyes off the small shops lined up across the street. Ellen waits. Jamie isdeliberate, slow to reveal even a small part of his soul. She knows this about her brother. Finally he turns and meets her eyes, his voice a whisper. “I was so afraid you were dying, El.”
    “More like being reborn.”
    “Oh my God, Ellen, you haven’t been hijacked by some fundamentalist Christian—”
    And she bursts into a cascade of laughter. And he smiles at himself. “Well, you said ‘reborn.’ ”
    “We’re outside, I can smoke, right?”
    “If you have to.”
    “This is a long story,” she says as she lights a cigarette, preparing herself for the saga she’s about to tell. “Okay, here goes.… I went to Spain to get away from Buffalo. Well, really to get away from myself in Buffalo. And Dad, he seemed to be everywhere, you know?”
    Jamie nods. He left for the same reason.
    “It was my fault. I couldn’t leave it alone. I had to tell him about every new job I got, even though I knew—Jamie, I
knew—
that he’d tell me what was wrong with it and how I was an idiot to work there. And there’d come a time with each new guy I was seeing when I’d say, ‘Come home and meet my mom and dad.’ ”
    “A suicide mission,” Jamie says with quiet assurance. None of this is new to him. “Dad didn’t like any of them, and Mom probably said, ‘He seems nice enough.’ ”
    Ellen nods. “The phone would ring later that night and Dad would be sure to tell me what a loser I’d picked. And I’d defend the guy, even though I was having my own doubts by the time I took him home. And we’d start shouting at each other and I’d tell him if he ever wanted to see me again, he’d have to clean up his act and he’d shout at me that there was nothing wrong with his act and it was my act that was a pitiful mess.…” Ellen shrugs. “And he was right.”
    “Dad was never right,” Jamie says.
    “You know,” Ellen tells him, “you have to acknowledge truth wherever it comes from.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    And instead of getting angry, Ellen laughs again. “Jamie,” she says, “you don’t see the value of the truth?”
    “Mostly, no.”
    “Uh-oh,” Ellen says, “this is going to be harder than I thought.”
    “What is?”
    “Saving your life. I’m here to save your life.”
    “The impossible dream.” But he’s grinning. “You want another coffee?”
    He gets up, goes inside to get it, and she takes a deep breath. The mission is out on the table. He doesn’t seem offended or even reflexively resistant. She can slow down a bit, she thinks. They have time, and suddenly she’s exhausted. She lays her head on her crossed arms and feels the warmth of the metal table beneath them. By the time Jamie comes back with their new coffees, she’s asleep.
    SHE LEANS INTO HIM as they walk home. He has his arm around her and is laughing as she trips over her own feet. Anyone watching would think they were a couple stumbling home after a very drunken all-nighter.
    When they get back to the condo, Jamie opens the pullout couch in his second bedroom, the one he has made into his office, and tucks Ellen in. She’s mumbling “Thank you,” barely awake, and then she’s not. He takes his fifth period’s essays from his desk and closes the door softly behind him.
    The day is glorious, quintessential San Diego weather—assertive blue sky, a comforting breeze from the ocean, temperaturejust right for sitting in the sun. He’ll take the papers and another cup of coffee and read them on his patio—“microscopic” as it may be—while he waits for Ellen to wake up.
    He assigned his eighth graders
The Miracle Worker
. This is his honors class, and he’s hoping at least some of them will be able to think beyond the “triumph over adversity” reaction most people