The Visibles Read Online Free PDF Page A

you’re running out, though. But Mom will probably be back in time to buy a new case.”
    He kept writing. Steven had hardly said a word about her since she’d left, so I didn’t know what I thought I was going to achieve, fishing. Steven had hardly spoken to her anyway, except to ask if she could wash a load of his whites. He probably didn’t even care that she was gone. Although, was that possible? Yes, she and Steven were very different—she was so glamorous —but Steven had to have some thoughts about it. Just one teensy feeling, somewhere.
    “Summer, there you are.” My father appeared in the doorway. “I have a favor to ask you.”
    He led me to the living room, and we sat down on the couch. “Mrs. Ryan just called. She wanted to know if I could tutor Claire in biology.”
    I stiffened, surprised. I’d looked for Claire at school today but hadn’t seen her anywhere. “You said no, right?”
    “I said I was too busy.”
    I tried not to laugh. Lately, my father’s version of busy was pilingmagazines for recycling and watching the home shopping channels—he liked the old people that called in. He probably hadn’t even gone to the lab all week.
    My father picked up one of the little plastic figurines from the toy ski slope he’d bought on a trip to Switzerland. It came with four little Swiss skiers, each with a blanked-out, stoic Swiss expression. Steven had been obsessed with the ski slope when my parents brought it home, but it had become more of a Christmas decoration. Last night, on the walk home from dinner, there were suddenly fairy lights on our neighbors’ banisters and Christmas trees in their front windows. It made our naked, untended-to tree in the living room seem so obviously neglected, so I went down to our basement storage space, found the Christmas box, and brought everything up myself—the ornaments, the Santa knickknacks, the ski slope, even old holiday photos of all of us unwrapping Christmas gifts, my father inevitably wearing a gift-wrap bow on the top of his head. The stuff wasn’t that heavy. And it was sort of fun to decorate on my own.
    “Perhaps you’d like to tutor Claire instead,” my father suggested.
    I shook my head. “I’m kind of busy, too.”
    He rubbed his hand over his smooth chin. “Busy with what?”
    I didn’t answer.
    “Well, I’ve already set it up,” he breezed on. “She’s coming over in ten minutes.”
    “Dad.”
    He placed the plastic skier at the top of the hill and let go. The skier zipped down. My father caught him at the bottom, tweezed his little plastic head between his thumb and pointer finger, and guided him back up the side of the slope, simulating a chairlift. He made a brrr motor sound with his lips, impersonating a motor.
    When I was down in the basement getting all the ornaments and stuff, an invitation fluttered out from a box. It was for a Christmas party at Claire’s house from that first year I’d attended Peninsula. The night of the party, my mother asked why I wasn’t getting ready. When I said I’d rather watch the Christmas marathon on TV—they were playing Rudolph, Frosty, and The Year Without a Santa Claus back-to-back, astellar lineup—my mother blew her bangs off her face. “It’s not a crime Claire has other friends,” she chided. “It wouldn’t kill you to be friends with them, too.”
    As if it had been my decision. As if I’d orchestrated things that way.
    The doorbell rang. Mrs. Ryan stood in the hall. “Claire’s down at the deli,” she said, walking right in. “Thank you so much for doing this, sweetie. It’s a huge help.”
    I grumbled tonelessly.
    “Is your dad home?” She looked around. “He invited me over for coffee, but I wasn’t sure if he was mixed up, since it’s so early. I didn’t think he’d be back from work yet.”
    I felt a flush of embarrassment. “He had a half day.”
    Mrs. Ryan walked into the foyer, smiling at our family pictures on the wall, many of them over ten years