Read Online Dev Dreams, Volume One by Ruth Madison - Free Book Online Page A

you go out with Jake last night? Do you
know where he is?” Paul asked.
    “I don't know,” Lucy replied, her fingers
combing her bangs, “No one answered when I called last night.”
    “Mr. Miller,” the teacher interrupted, “I
would appreciate it if you would sit forward on your chair.”
    Paul swung forward and smiled innocently.
Sophie saw Lucy roll her eyes.
    After school Paul and Sophie went straight to
the Kenley house. They found that Lucy was there too.
    “Don't talk to me,” she said.
    “Don't worry about it,” Sophie said. She sat
down next to Paul on the steps and waited. No one was home and
there was no indication of where they had gone. After twenty
minutes, the family car pulled up. The parents got out first. Their
faces were tight and drawn. Alex got out next and said, “Okay,
nobody say anything.”
    “What would we...oh,” Lucy said as Jake got
out of the car. He had a cane in his hand, but he was holding it in
the middle, as though he was just waiting to hand it over to
someone else. Sophie noticed that he didn't step forward, but
leaned against the car.
    “It's a misunderstanding,” Jake said, “Just a
mistake.”
    “What? What's going on?” Lucy said.
    “They think,” Jake said, “They think I have
MS.”
    Sophie gasped.
    “What?” Lucy said, but everyone ignored
her.
    Mrs. Kenley tugged at the bottom of her suit
and said, “There are treatments. We'll be aggressive.”
    “Not now, Mom,” Jake said.
    “Jacob, you listen to me,” Mrs. Kenley began,
but her husband took her shoulder and guided her toward the house.
“There will be time to talk about this,” he said. When the two
adults had entered the house, Sophie, Paul, Alex, Jake, and Lucy
remained outside.
    “It’s nothing, really,” Jake said, “They said
there’s no way to know for sure yet. I just pulled a muscle or
something. Alex, tell them it’s crazy.”
    “It’s crazy,” Alex whispered, but he was
looking down. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
    ***
    The next week Jake put the cane in his locker
and stayed close to the walls as he walked around the school. He
was late to every class. For the one class he had with Sophie and
Paul he showed up seven minutes late and the teacher lectured him
on respect for the class. Paul and Sophie looked at each other and
Paul shrugged.
    Jake finally gave up after he fell in a
classroom and grabbed hold of a desk that then toppled over on top
of him. The teacher was furious at the disruption and thought he
was drunk. She sent him to the office.
    He retrieved the cane and tried to pretend it
was the latest fashion accessory. For gym class he had a note from
the doctor and when the gym teacher, who was also Jake’s baseball
coach, read it, he coughed gruffly and said, “I guess we won’t be
seeing you at practice anymore.”
    “Looks that way,” Jake said.
    He skipped a math class and went to the
cafeteria early and just sat in the empty room. The first lunch
bell rang and people began to arrive. Sophie walked through the
door with a red stain spread over the front of her shirt. For a
second he thought it was blood, and then he realized it was ink.
She saw him, but didn’t let recognition register on her face. Since
he was in the popular crowd he didn’t ever talk to his brother’s
friends at school. This time, though, he called out, “Is that what
they mean by a fashion statement?”
    “Do you really have to make a comment?”
    “Sophie, you look ridiculous.”
    “That’s just what I needed to hear. Thanks.
Why don’t you just lend me your jacket like a gentleman?”
    Jake smiled and pulled his jacket off. He
handed it up to her and she put it on, covering the red ink stain
that had spread across the front of her shirt.
    “Tell me how this kind of thing happens to
you.”
    Sophie shrugged. She sat down next him at the
cafeteria table. “I didn’t realize I had left the pen uncapped, and
I was listening to the teacher, and I before I knew it, the pen