The One Thing Read Online Free PDF Page A

pathetic.”
    He dismissed my comment with a grunt. “What do you read, Thera?”
    I hadn’t been ready for that question. I’d given up on books. Braille was too much work and I wasn’t very good at it, so I read with my fingers only when absolutely necessary.
At school, usually. So basically the only words I’d actually tackled lately were on the computer, where I’d spent hours trying to figure out the next concert venue for the Loose
Cannons. And that hardly counted, seeing as how my computer did all the reading for me. Finally, I answered the question as I would’ve six months ago. “Anything funny with a happy
ending,” I said. “I hate reading stuff that is depressing or morbid or in any way crappy. That’s what life is for.”
    He raised his eyebrows like,
Well, aren’t you little miss sunshine and rainbows?
“So you don’t read books about dragons?”
    I shook my head.
    “Sorcerers?”
    I rolled my eyes.
    “Mystics? Astronauts?”
    I harrumphed.
    “Wow, Thera. You need to get a life,” he said. He was smiling as he said it.
    “This from the kid who reads encyclopedias for fun,” I pointed out.
    “It’s entertaining,” he said indignantly. “When I had my last back surgery? I was, like, stuck in a hospital bed forever. Bored. The only thing worth a crap in the
library at Memorial was their encyclopedia set. So I read the
A
s for two weeks straight.” He smiled his toothy smile and gestured to the bookshelf, to the first book in the set. It
was rather thick. “There are a lot of
A
s. Now? I have my own set. And except for the
Q
s, which”—he paused for half a beat and his grin fell, just a little, but
then it bounced right back and he continued—“I don’t have, I’ve made it clear to the
R
s. And things are starting to get interesting, what with the rail-babbler and
Arkady Raikin.”
    “Do I want to know what those things are?” I asked, not bothering to hide my amusement.
    “The rail-babbler is a goofy-looking Malaysian bird—”
    “So it’s the Ben of the bird kingdom?”
    He went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “And Arkady Raikin? You haven’t heard of him? The Soviet comedian?”
    “I haven’t had the pleasure,” I said dryly. Just what I needed: a ten-year-old friend whose SAT scores could blow mine out of the water.
    He shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Thera, Thera, Thera. You’ve been missing out.”
    I just nodded. I couldn’t agree more.

B en wanted me to meet his dog. Since dogs weren’t exactly my thing, I told him that introductions were completely unnecessary. But he
didn’t listen. Leaving me in front of his encyclopedias, he swung off to retrieve his dog from the backyard. He took my sight with him, the room ebbing away to nothing as he stepped into the
hallway.
    I knew there was a whole room full of the sort of crap that brainy ten-year-olds find fascinating, but I felt as though I’d been left alone with nothing but the soccer ball I’d seen
inside Ben’s closet. Tripping over God knows what, slamming my shin into something hard-cornered, and cussing creatively, I finally came to a stop with one hand on the doorjamb of Ben’s
closet. I stared into the void, seeing the soccer ball all too well in my mind’s eye.
    My phone rattled to life in my back pocket. Startled, I flinched and sucked in my breath, heart throbbing in my chest. Yanking the phone out, I fumbled my way across the room and stuffed it in
my purse. It was Clarissa Fenstermacher calling, no doubt. A fellow student at Merchant’s. A couple weeks ago, Mr. Huff had paired us up to work together on a summer research paper about
illiteracy in America, and Clarissa had been hounding me about it ever since. I’d been doing my best to avoid her.
    I didn’t hear the distinctive
tink tink tink
of the dog’s nails approaching until the mongrel slammed into me. Ben’s dog, Wally, was a monstrous, shedding, yellow
thing who slobbered all over Ben until dinner. While I was