Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule Read Online Free PDF Page B

stupid to pick up on her feelings at first. I was all wrapped up in myself. But man... I was just a kid! Bein’ big doesn’t mean you’re grown up. You were grown up when you were born , Skipper, but me...
    "So to make up for bein’ stupid, I did something even more stupid. I called her and asked her to meet me at a restaurant—an expensive restaurant—so we could just talk and clear things up. I can hear you rolling your eyes Sandy, Bashalli. I was just trying to be honest. I even thought I was being sensitive . Yeah.
    "She came sweeping in the door like she was on her way to the Oscars, Tom. Beautiful gown, hair done up, makeup, the whole nine yards plus touchdown and victory dance. Me, I was in jeans and a sportcoat. I mean, the place wasn’t that expensive.
    "We ate and talked and she cried and I told her how much I liked her, and because I liked her so much I didn’t want to mislead her, and all that stuff, stuff you say when you can’t really say the truth. She got loud and threw her tapioca at me and flew out the door like a rocket.
    "She left the school. Nobody knew where she’d gone to. Somebody said her parents had put her in a hospital. I never knew, not exactly. People stopped talking about her. I guess no one really cared. By that time she didn’t have any friends—just me. And I don’t know exactly what I was.
    "That wasn’t the end, though. I started getting those rose-pink cards again, by mail. They always just said ‘C ’— apostrophe — ‘Y ’— ‘A’ . Get it? ‘ See ya ’. Over and over. As in crazy .
    "One time there was a razor blade taped to the card. I got scared—for myself, for my family too. So I thought again about somethin’ I’d had on my mind since I was a little kid, the whole Swift-Newton thing, the hard feelings, the separation way back when. I wanted to be the Newton, the half -Newton, to end it. And I guess I already wanted to work for Swift Enterprises. And to fly jets. So I made up my mind and moved to Shopton. Sixteen years old. Fugitive from life, hunh.
    "I thought it was all over. But ."
    Here Bud paused. His video watchers—first Tom alone, then all those predicted and a few more—could see the pain on his face as he collected his thoughts and continued.
    It had escalated after the first note was left in his apartment. He had come out of the local supermarket to find the windshield of his beloved red convertible, TSE TSE FLY, spiderwebbed. "Sorry, Tom, but it wasn’t a rock from an open truck, like I told you. There was a rosy note. ‘C’ya. C’ya. C’ya.’ Over and over. All over it in tiny letters. Musta been a hundred times."
    The next day, coming home from Enterprises, he found a splash of rose-pink paint slopped across his apartment door. Bud’s neighbor mentioned a dark-haired girl scurrying along the street with paint dripping from her hands. "Do you get that, genius boy? Not from a brush. She had sloshed it on with her hands !"
    When Tom had asked Bud to join him on the trip to Nevada, Bud had shrugged it off distractedly. "The real reason was, I had an appointment with Rock at the Shopton PD. Secret, confidential stuff. He promised that. He said there wasn’t much he could do, not yet. He said I should see a lawyer, maybe get a restraining order."
    But Bud Barclay was never one to believe in restraint.
    He had returned to his quiet apartment and had sat in a Draconian chair with distressed and hopeless cushions, sat for quite a time before a wall of opaque thought. He felt guilt, confusion, dread.
    The shrilling phone gave him a jolt. He recognized the voice instantly. It was breathless, tearful, disjointed.
    "She apologized. She kept saying she didn’t mean anything by it. That she was upset—like, duh ! She said she knew she needed help. Talked about being on medication that sometimes made her a little crazy.
    "Then she’d sort of flip, click over to a different mood— so how are you, Bud? How’s work? What was the moon like? But