Waiting For Sarah Read Online Free PDF Page A

simply wasn’t interested. Maybe it was his dad persuading him to watch all those boring Tour de France stages on television when he was a little kid that turned him against it; he didn’t know, but he was darned if he was going to take up a sport he didn’t even like and none of his friends was interested in.
    And now it was too late: he would never hear from his dad those few words he had always wanted, those words that said simply ...
    â€œTrick or treat!” Jimmy and Sharon squealing at an opening door brought him back to the present.
    Jimmy and Sharon wanted to help push Mike’s chair. “Sure,” said Mike.
    Robbie said, “You know what, Mike?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œTonight is the first time in a year you haven’t growled at everyone. Must be the Halloween spirit.”
    Mike shrugged. Halloween this year seemed different. Strange. As though there really
were
ghosts in the air. He could feel them. The dead are everywhere, he thought, surrounding him in the darkness and in the misty lamplight. He could feel them in the streets and in the trees and in the garden hedges, hovering at the edge of visibility.
    Maybe Mom and Dad and Becky were out there too, watching over him; he refused to accept that they were gone forever, that he would never see them again. They had been together, one family, noisy and alive, and now they were gone. He’d never realized that life hung on such a thin, weak thread, that death could so easily snap it, that your normal, everyday life and routines, and your home, could change so drastically that you weren’t the same person anymore.
    The mist swirled under yellow streetlights.
    Mom and Dad and Becky, buried under a granite stone at Forest Lawn Cemetery. But their spirits were out there somewhere, in the misty darkness.
    In a better place.
    He had to believe it.
    It was Halloween. Robbie was showing off for his cousins and having fun.
    Witches and goblins and ghosts took over the neighborhood.

12 ... didn’t need anyone
    Lunch-time in the noisy cafeteria. He ignored the kids around him and read his book. Robbie was late.
    â€œCan I get you anything?”
    He looked up. It was the big lunk who had helped Robbie manhandle his chair into the school in September — what was his name, Bill Packard? He was new at Carleton; that was all Robbie had said about him. No, not Bill — Ben. That was it — Ben Packard.
    â€œNo,” Mike growled.
    â€œI’m on my way to the pop machine. Thought you might need a Coke or something.”
    â€œI said no.”
    Packard smiled. “It’s my treat.”
    Mike swiveled his chair so that his back was to the boy. Idiot; couldn’t he understand plain English? Couldn’t he see he was busy reading? He went back to his book.
    â€œPlease yourself,” said Packard, shrugging and walking away.
    After he had eaten his lunch there was still no sign of Robbie, so he aimed his wheelchair towards theexit, skillfully avoiding kids, chairs and table edges. As he reached the door his way was blocked by a girl with glasses. Margaret Cowley.
    â€œMike Scott!” she yelled. “The very man I’m looking for.”
    Scowling, he tried to swerve around and past her, but she danced backwards and blocked his way once more.
    â€œMike! Stop! This is
important
!”
    He hated it when people came too close to his chair and leaned down and bellowed at him, like just because he had no legs he was, what — deaf and stupid? Margaret Cowley’s loud voice made him back away.
    But she followed. “It’s the millennium, Mike. It’s also Carleton’s fiftieth ... ”
    He backed off some more. And just in case she hadn’t got the message he growled, “Get out of my face.”
    That did it: she stood still but continued talking. “... Carleton’s fiftieth anniversary this year, Mike, as you already know, I’m sure.”
    He said nothing, the