The Man Without a Face Read Online Free PDF Page B

have tests at school.”
    “What school did you go to?”
    I told him. He didn’t say anything.
    Then, “Where, by the way, do you live?”
    “The first house on the land side past the dinghy pier.” He stopped a few yards short of the house. “All right. Be at my house tomorrow morning at eight. I’ll coach you three hours every morning five days a week, and I’ll give you enough work to take you another three hours. That’s six hours a day during what should be your vacation. It will be tough. But if I ever find you haven’t done the work I’ve assigned you, you won’t come back. Are you sure it’s worth it?”
    So with my usual luck I had found myself another Hitler. Repressing a desire to say Sieg heil with a snappy arm salute like in the movies, I said, “Yes. Sir.”
    I could see right away we were going to have a lovely summer, he and I. But he didn’t need me. I needed him.
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    And we both knew it. And to add to everything else, I would have to look at him three hours a day five days a week. I know it sounds pretty awful to say that, like not wanting to be seen with a cripple. But I can’t help it. The only thing it’s less awful than is being around Gloria for the next three years.
    “Where’ve you been?” Mother asked as I walked through the back door into the kitchen. “Do you know what hour it is?”
    “Nine,” I said, knowing it was after ten, and trying to get across the room as fast as possible.
    “It’s ten thirty. And don’t walk out of the room while I’m talking to you. Have you had dinner?”
    “Yes,” I lied, still moving towards the door to the back staircase.
    “Where?”
    I was thinking furiously, because until that moment it hadn’t occurred to me that I wasn’t going to tell her about McLeod’s coaching me. But it was as though the decision were already made and all I had to do was to find some acceptable explanation for being out so late and arriving home in strange clothes. My own I had strung on the back line as I passed on the way in.
    “And whose clothes are those?” Gloria asked, as though she had been cued by what was going on in my head.
    “Pete Lansing’s. I fell off the dock and Barney lent me these.” Barney was Pete’s younger brother. Pete was in Vietnam and therefore unavailable for questioning. And Barney would play dumb. Besides, he was due to go off to camp almost any day.
    “I wish you’d be more careful,” Mother said. “You
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    might hit your head on a rock and really hurt yourself. This isn’t Florida or Long Island with nothing but sand at the bottom.”
    “First you have to have something in your head to hurt,” Gloria drawled, like some old Bette Davis heroine. She eyed McLeod’s pants. “I didn’t know Pete was that tall,” she said. “And you could get two of him in that sweater.” “Maybe just being away from you was enough to get his vitamins working,” Meg said, to my astonishment. She was sitting at the table reading, drinking a malted, and working her way through a box of chocolate chip cookies. It’s true that Pete Lansing had once seemed to have the hots for Gloria, along with all the other older boys. But none of them ever stayed that way for long. Which was one reason why our Gloria was so sour. Or maybe it was the other way around.
    “You keep on stuffing yourself,” Gloria said to Meg, “and there won’t be any guys around you at all.”
    Meg took another cookie. But I could see her cheeks get red. One good turn deserves another. “She may not get as many as you,” I said pointedly, “but seven gets you eight that anybody who likes her will go on liking her. Besides, you can lose fat, but there’s not much you can do about a naturally repulsive personality.”
    Gloria doesn’t get red when she gets mad, the way Meg does. She gets white, and for a minute there she looked like skim milk. She got up. “Let’s see the label in those pants,” she said, and snapped out a hand toward me.
    Now that was