Thin Ice Read Online Free PDF

subject-headed ‘300S Coupe.’”
    “Here it is.” He made funny little noises as I read him what I thought was an indecipherable message. But it must have made sense to him, as he thanked me cheerfully.
    “Good news?” I asked.
    “There’s hope for the bedeviled car after all,” he said. “I’ll probably be late and then I’m going to Claire’s. Do you have plans?”
    “Nothing special.”
    “I’ll be up early so I may not see you. I think I found the sled I want down in Minneapolis.”
    “Why Minneapolis? There’s a shop on every county-road junction around here.”
    “Better selection, better prices. Besides, every dealer around here knows how I lost my old sled. I’m a little tired of the teasing.”
    “What do they say?”
    “Stuff like, ‘Just for you, Scotty, we’ll throw in a wet suit.’ It’s irritating and it’s distracting. I want to talk about the machines and they just want to joke.”
    Serious stuff, buying a power toy.
    Serious and complicated, I guess. It took him four trips over three weeks. He had to shop around, haggle over price, order, select accessories and gear, and then—a red-letter day in my brother’s life—he got to pick up the dream machine. Four trips and I wasn’t invited along even once.
    “I’ll be home for supper,” he said before he left on the great day. “It’s Friday night. Let’s kick off the weekend and have a real meal.”
    “A real meal that I cook?”
    “I’ll pick up some things. You could start a chicken after school.”
    “If it’s a real meal, why don’t we have company? Invite Claire.”
    Not amused.
    “Is she going to Minneapolis with you? When am I going to meet her?”
    He blew off my questions the way he always blew off my interest in his girlfriend. Over the past few weeks I’d gotten bold and asked about her every chance I got. If he can be so mysterious about his love life, I can be obnoxious. I pushed him to exasperation once, which is how I finally learned her age: thirty-three. An older woman.
    It made me wonder sometimes, was she pushing to learn about me ?
    I watched him pour coffee into a travel mug. Why not push as far as I dared? “Do you love her?” I asked.
    He spilled hot coffee over his hand. Didn’t swear, didn’t mutter a thing. Just rinsed his hand, dried it on a towel, started pouring again. I waited. I knew he’d heard me.
    “No,” he said finally. “I don’t love her.”
    Scott spoke clearly and firmly, but later, when I was going over everything he ever said and did in those last days, I decided that there was something wrong about the way he had said it. He’d said “don’t,” but I think he meant “won’t.”
    I let him get away without any more questions about his private life. I’d have loved to be going with him, but I hadn’t been invited, had even been flatly refused when I begged. “You should study,” he said. “Finals next week, right?”
    Right, as always. School was pressing down, and I had ArdenArt orders to finish. I loved my woodworking, but the business of it had become as tedious as school; filling orders for frames and mirrors based on old inspirations was a lot like doing homework. I’d much rather be working up new ideas, like the one I had gotten a few days before when I was in the c-store prowling through the cheap candy.
    “Darn, I forgot,” I muttered, and ran out of the house, waving my arms to stop him as he backed down the driveway.
    He looked irritated as he rolled down the window. “What?”
    “Remember that bulk candy store at the Rosedale Mall?”
    “Yes. So?”
    “I need wax lips.”
    * * *
    One box of wax lips, eighteen dollars and ninety-five cents.”
    “Did you get a receipt?”
    “This is for ArdenArt?” He was stunned.
    “Why else would I need them?”
    “You’re decorating frames with red lips!”
    My poor, dull, dim-witted brother. “Of course not,” I said patiently. “Makeup mirrors.”
    Minutes later he was on the phone telling