Read Online Calling Home by Michael Cadnum - Free Book Online Page A

if you moved away.”
    â€œNo, I don’t want to. But I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”
    â€œHis feelings.” She said it with contempt, but then she was quiet.
    â€œYes. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”
    â€œWhere does he live?”
    â€œNewport Beach.”
    â€œWhere’s that?”
    â€œIn Southern California someplace. I’m not sure where.”
    â€œOh, Jesus. Southern California. I’d kill myself if I had to live down there.”
    â€œI don’t know. I’ve never been there.” I hesitated. “I’ve never even flown.”
    â€œIt’s no big deal. None of it is. Travel is boring.”
    I sat up and blinked against the brightness. She put her arm around me, very tender now that she had a secret out of me, and whispered into my ear in a way that made my penis turn around and listen, “We ought to run away together.”
    I smiled, because what could anyone do in a situation like that? She was the sexiest girl in California at that moment, and she knew it, and she wrapped herself around me and lay me down on the grass and stroked my lips with her tongue, controlling me and warping me this way and that, and I had the feeling that sharing something intimate with Angela made her feel like the most powerful woman in the world.
    I struggled to my feet like a person climbing out of a sleeping bag, and she stood with me, her arm around me like she didn’t want me to run away. And I didn’t want to run, either, because I felt that nothing could happen to me as long as I was with her; she was that powerful.
    A pudgy man held an object in his hands and teetered on the edge of the lake, working his feet into the gray, crusty rocks for steadiness. He kneeled and placed the object he held into the water. He stood again and looked down at it lovingly, and for a long time he did not do anything.
    â€œA grown man,” Angela said.
    The man stepped back and took a box the size of a small book from his pocket. An antenna quivered from the box, and the man pushed the box gently with one finger, as if he was dialing a phone.
    The object began to move, and as it moved it bobbed over waves in the water that I had not noticed before, and rocked, and the small ripples of water broke over it and wet it. It made a purr that increased as it reached the quiet stretch of water and turned toward a duck. The duck swam hastily away from it.
    The man watched it, not with a playful expression, but with a very serious expression. The antenna quivered as he manipulated dials in his hand.
    â€œA grown man playing with toys.”
    â€œIt’s wonderful!”
    â€œWhat’s wonderful about a grown man playing with a toy speedboat? He’s older than my father.” Angela brushed a dried blade of grass from her pants, and it was obvious that the withered-up little blade of grass was supposed to be me.
    â€œMead ran away,” she said.
    â€œI heard about that.”
    â€œI think you know where he is.”
    I felt cold. “Of course I don’t. What a silly thing to say.”
    â€œYou’ve been acting very odd lately. Odd even for you. Lani mentioned it. She’s worried about you.”
    â€œLani’s a very nice person.”
    â€œAnd I’m not?”
    Angela is everything but nice. But I spoke carefully. “You’re both nice people.”
    â€œI think Mead is hiding out somewhere, and that you know where he is. I bet you get together with him and drink. I’m going to figure out where.”
    â€œThat’s not true!”
    â€œThere’s something funny going on. Look at you—twitching and sweating. Lani’s right—there is something wrong.”
    â€œMy mother’s been acting hysterical lately. If you had a mother like mine, you’d be strange, too.”
    Angela tilted back her head and watched me. Not in the way Lani would look at me, but as though I were an insect