The Goodbye Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

TV.”
    “Sounds nice.”
    “I told you about it in the letter.”
    “What letter?”
    “Oh yeah. I never mailed it.” He smiled a little guiltily. “Don’t ask me why. I just didn’t.” He shrugged, then said, “Anyway, my mom’s still deciding if we ought to move there.”
    “For good, you mean?”
    “Yeah. She says New York is going to be too expensive by ourselves. And in New Jersey my sisters can all go to public high school because the schools there are so nice. Plus my mom likes being near her brother and stuff.”
    “Wow,” I said. “So you don’t really know where you’re going to live.”
    Michael shook his head. “But I’ll be here till graduation no matter what.”
    “And you get to go to Kendra’s big crepe party,” I said, trying to be funny.
    “Yeah. Like, wow. Crepes are just pancakes, aren’t they?”
    “Not
just
pancakes.
French
pancakes,” I told him, and he laughed a little.
    “Are you going to be there?”
    “Yeah. I love pancakes.”
    “Good,” he said. “So I’ll see you there.” He bounced the ball back to me. I wasn’t expecting it and I also wasn’t expecting him to say “I’ll see you there” or to tell me about writing a letter to me from New Jersey, even though he never mailed it. So I missed the ball and it went rolling away and banged into the schoolyard fence. And then he just walked away and went back to playing something stupid with the other boys in our class. It was weird. Boy, it was weird. I couldn’t wait to tell Katy.

Chapter Seven
    I didn’t get a chance to ask Katy what had gone on in Dr. Pinsher’s office because by the time she got out, we were in science class studying photosynthesis again. It looked like she’d been crying. But of course, everybody who comes out of Dr. Pinsher’s office looks like they’ve been crying. It’s like Dr. Pinsher
wants
you to cry. Her whole office is filled with Kleenex boxes. I noticed that the day I brought the note to her.
    Anyway, as soon as school ended and I got Katy alone, I asked her what was going on.
    She was really quiet when she spoke. I could hardly hear her, with buses and cars driving by on Broadway. “She asked me if I understood how it was with Sam. His ‘condition.’ She called it his ‘condition.’ ”
    “Of course you do. You’ve been living with him your entire life!”
    “That’s what I told her. But then she asked if I understood how ‘grave’ it was and how Sam would never get any better. If I realized that he was
severely
retarded and would be growing into a big, grown-up retard that was still in diapers that my mom couldn’t handle.”
    “She didn’t call him a retard!”
    “But that’s what she meant. Believe me. Then she said that after last night—with my mom getting stitches and Sam breaking his wrist—we had to think of putting Sam in some kind of place. Like some kind of institution where other mental people live.”
    Katy swallowed so hard I could see a lump bulge in her throat. “It would be for the good of everyone, Dr. Pinsher said. Because Sam’s ‘condition’ is ‘taking a toll’ on all of us and it’s getting worse and actually turning dangerous, and Bug Eye and me and my mom can’t go on the way we’ve been.”
    “Is that true?” I asked. I didn’t really know what to think. I mean, I know it’s awful when Sam is wild or doing certain disgusting things, but he can also be really sweet. Sometimes he’ll cuddle up on the sofa with his teddy bear and he’ll look just like a baby—a huge, hairy baby, but sweet all the same.
    “Well, last night was bad. And sometimes he gets a little wild. But nothing like that ever happened before. It was just, you know, an
accident.
”
    “What does your mom say?” I asked her next.
    “That’s the weirdest part. My mom never told me anything. The first I heard about the idea was from Dr. Pinsher. Why didn’t my mom just talk to me?”
    “I don’t know,” I told her. But what I guessed was that