The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon Read Online Free PDF

being she still felt totally unhungry.
    Besides, you may never get to be Pete’s age, that disquieting inner voice said. How could anyone have such a cold and scary voice inside them? Such a traitor to the cause? You may never get out of these woods.
    â€œShut up, shut up, shut up, ” she hissed, and buckled the pack’s flap with trembling fingers. That done, she started to get up . . . and then paused, one knee planted in the soft earth beside the ferns, her head up, scenting the air like a fawn on its first expedition away from its mother’s side. Only Trisha wasn’t smelling; she was listening, focusing on that one sense with all of her concentration.
    Branches rattling in a faint breath of breeze. Whining mosquitoes (rotten, nasty old things). The woodpecker. The far-off caw of a crow. And, at the furthest outpost between silence and audition, the drone of a plane. No voices from the path. Not asingle voice. It was as if the trail to North Conway had been canceled. And as the plane’s motor faded away completely, Trisha conceded the truth.
    She got to her feet, her legs feeling heavy, her stomach feeling heavy. Her head felt light and strange, a gas-filled balloon tethered to a lead weight. She was suddenly drowning in isolation, choking on a bright and yet oppressive sense of herself as a living being cast out from her fellows. She had somehow gotten out of bounds, wandered off the playing field and into a place where the rules she was used to no longer applied.
    â€œ Hey! ” she screamed. “ Hey, someone, do you hear me? Do you hear me? Hey! ” She paused, praying for an answer to come back, but no answer came and so she brought the worst out at last: “ Help me, I’m lost! Help me, I’m lost! ” Now the tears began to come and she could no longer hold them back, could no longer kid herself that she was in charge of this situation. Her voice trembled, became first the wavery voice of a little kid and then almost the shriek of a baby who lies forgotten in her pram, and that sound frightened her more than anything else so far on this awful morning, the only human sound in the woods her weepy, shrieking voice calling for help, calling for help because she was lost.

Third Inning

    S HE YELLED for perhaps fifteen minutes, sometimes cupping her hands around her mouth and turning her voice in the direction she imagined the main trail must be, mostly just standing there by the ferns and screaming. She gave one final shriek—no words, just a high birdcall of combined anger and fear—so loud it hurt her throat, then sat down beside her pack and put her face in her hands and cried. She cried hard for maybe five minutes (it was impossible to tell for sure, her watch was back home, lying on the table next to her bed, another smooth move by the Great Trisha), and when she stopped she felt a little better . . . except for the bugs. The bugs were everywhere, crawling and whining and buzzing, trying to drink her blood and sip her sweat. The bugs were driving her crazy. Trisha got to her feet again, waving the air with her Red Sox cap, reminding herself not to slap, knowing she would slap, and soon, if things didn’t change. She wouldn’t be able to help herself.
    Walk or stay where she was? She didn’t know which would be best; she was now too frightened for anything much like rational thought. Her feetdecided for her and Trisha got moving again, looking around fearfully as she went, wiping her swollen eyes with her arm. The second time she raised the arm to her face she saw half a dozen mosquitoes on it and slapped at them blindly, killing three. Two had been full to bursting. The sight of her own blood didn’t ordinarily upset her, but this time all the strength went out of her legs and she sat down again on the needle-carpet in a cluster of old pines and cried some more. She felt headachy and a little whoopsy in her stomach. But I