The She Read Online Free PDF

name—almost as if it was important for me to commit myself before she said who it was. Like maybe I knew this person and wouldn't want to go.
    She tore me off a yellow copy of the form, and I saw "Grey Shailey" written there, and the walls moved three feet inward. Her best friend's voice whizzed through my head with some tale of Grey being in Maine for the past three weeks because her grandmother was dying. I dropped my hand on my knee, thinking,
Your lucky day, huh?
    I do feel like an extremely lucky person, but I'm also aware that there's a catch. When I'm unlucky, it's almost beyond human comprehension—like losing both parents.
    "Grey Shailey had a boating accident, and somebody died," I heard myself say, and didn't quite believe it. So I repeated it. "A
boating
accident."
    "Yes."
    "Jesus. That's almost enough to make you believe in—"
    I stopped short of saying "the she-devil of the hole," because I'd just taken the Lord's name in vain, and sometimes Mrs. Ashaad could write you up for that, depending on her mood. I just sat there apologizing, trying to figure out the mysteries of the universe.
    I've solved a few mysteries since I sat staring at this form and this visitor's pass. But I'll admit, there are some things that will never be explained to me, maybe because the answers don't exist. I can't explain how the girl who was responsible for my acid-inspired memory surges ended up in a boating accident nine or ten months later. It ranks right up there with your mother accidentally sending her Mayday over the ship-to-shore instead of the ship-to-ship, while you're playing with your toys on the floor.
    "I'll go," I told Mrs. Ashaad, and stood up. I had a thought that maybe this wasn't so unlucky. I wasn't concerned with Grey Shailey messing me up. She'd thrown me for a loop by slipping me acid and thinking she was so goddamn funny. But I got past it; I'd been fine about West Hook again for nearly a year: I was more concerned with how gratifying it might be to see her in hospital clothes, not looking so beautiful and stuck-up for once.

TWO
    When I got home after soccer practice, the light was on in the study. "Emmett?"
    "I'm here."
    I wandered in and threw my backpack and coat down beside his reading chain He was facing his monitor with his back to me, looking at a page full of small type.
    "Aren't you supposed to be teaching tonight?"
    "The week before Thanksgiving, the university does a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday schedule on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. It's something I don't quite understand. It must have to do with dollars and cents." He beckoned at me without turning around. "But it means I can sit here and start the final chapter of my dissertation. Read that line."
    I looked where his finger pointed and read, "'Saussure discovered that the relation between the sign and signifier is arbitrary.'"
    "Do you have any idea how significant that has long been to literary theory? To philosophy in general?"
    I patted him on the head, watching him stroke his beard contentedly. There was a bowl of pears on top of his bookshelf. Aunt Mel was great for putting bowls of fruit around. I reached for one, felt it was soft, and bit into it, sucking the juice down the back of my throat.
    "And if the university thinks it's Thursday, I take it Aunt Mel
is
teaching."
    "The university doesn't
think
; the university
knows.
If the university says it's Thursday, then it's Thursday." He turned and looked at me, his eyes glowing with pride over his dissertation.
    He pointed to my pear. "The way we think of and speak of this pear, that is known as the sign," he said, then pointed to his mouth. "The word alone,
pear,
is a signifier."
    I stuck the juicy thing to my mouth for another bite. "If it
is
Thursday, how come we're not sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner? You hear from Opa yet? We doing dinner at the Hyatt as usual?"
    He sighed. "I wish. Opa's having problems with his diabetes again. Circulation. He's having some pain in his legs and