Read Online Are You in the House Alone? by Richard Peck - Free Book Online

of trees started. It was mostly pavement and pigeons and people. But only the pigeons were moving. The people were lined up along the park benches, subway-train close. I nearly missed seeing my dad.
    He was halfway along a bench, wedged in between two other strangers. If he’d looked up, he’d have seen me only a few yards away beside a clump of gray marigolds. But he was looking at the ground where the pigeons were bobbing around. There was a newspaper folded on his knee, but he wasn’t reading it. He wasn’t doing anything. I recognized the tie with the small gold stripe in it I’d given him for his birthday. It was like identifying a dead body in a way. This was the man who was going to make all my problems evaporate. I walked on then, hoping he wouldn’t look up. To keep his secret from me, he’d need my cooperation. Like Connie said, men can’t afford to fail.
    I knew if I kept walking uptown and stayed on the same street, I’d get back to Grand Central Station. There didn’t seem to be any great rush about it. On one corner there wasa bunch of guys standing around the door of an Off-Track Betting place. Why weren’t they in school? Why wasn’t I?
    They were a blur of crushed-velvet wrap-around coats, shades, and platform shoes. One of the guys, no bigger than I was, stepped out in front of me, cupped his hand, wiggling a finger. “Hey, momma, whatcher hurry? Want a little action? Wanna get it on? Wanna—”
    I walked around him in the flow of pedestrians. He should have scared me out of my wits. But I nearly went blind with hatred instead. If he had something to prove about himself, what made him think he could use me? Did I owe him something because I was female and he was male?
    It was the first time I’d thought anything like that. I wished I’d had something very sharp and very lethal in my hand. I was ready to use it, on anybody. Then suddenly I was starved. I stopped at a Chock full o’Nuts and had two cream cheese sandwiches and an orange drink.
    *   *   *
    I don’t know why I half expected my mother to be meeting all the trains, but I did. She wasn’t the first person I saw when I got off at the station though. The first familiar face was Valerie Cathcart’s. She was heading home down Meeting Street with an armload of books. School was just out.
    Valerie’s father’s a doctor. That should put her in the middle of the best group in school, but it didn’t work that way for her. She was only half in a gang whose every other phrase was “How gross!” and even they could take her or leave her. So she worked in the school office during her free period and built a small empire as the school busybody.
    When she spotted me, she broke into a gallop. It was too late to cross the street to avoid a head-on with her. “Jeez,”Valerie said, puffing up to me, “where you been all day, Gail? Miss Roseberry in the office called your mom third period and I listened on the extension. Your mom was really grossed out. When she found out you weren’t in school, she didn’t know what to say. Then she called back in about five minutes and asked if Steve Pastorini was in school. But he was. Jeez, where’ve you been?”
    I opened my mouth to tell her. But something else came blurting out. “What business is it of yours? Do I owe you an explanation for everything I do? I’m sick of living in this fishbowl, and I’m sick of rejects like you who get their kicks from listening in on extensions because you don’t have a life of your own.” We were both breathless when I could stop talking. I seemed to have a lot to say all of a sudden to pathetic Valerie, for all the good it would do.
    “How gross,” she said, staring at me with her little pig eyes. “How rank. Excuse me for being alive.” Her big soft face began to crumple up, and I felt disgusted with myself only because I’d have to apologize to her. But later, not now.
    For nearly a half hour after I got home, I thought I wasn’t going to get