Read Online Emory’s Gift by W. Bruce Cameron - Free Book Online Page B

“I’ve had four people ask me over to their house this month and they all include Yvonne, like the town took a vote.”
    My dad agitatedly got to his feet. “There’s nothing wrong with the woman. I don’t want to hurt her feelings.” He stared moodily out the window. “But it’s as if the lack of any other alternatives makes her the default. Do you know what I mean by that?”
    “So if you don’t have a girlfriend, then you wind up with the person who is just there,” I said to my father.
    I briefly wondered if Kay had a boyfriend. If not, couldn’t I be the default? She didn’t act like she was going steady with anyone.
    “Exactly.” My father nodded.
    I was the oldest student in Junior Lifesaving, now that Dan Alderton had dropped out. I was “just there.” Who else could possibly be the default?
    I looked at my dad, who was running a hand through his reddish brown hair. This was the deepest and most intimate conversation we’d had in a long time. What I should do, I realized, was tell him about Kay. It would be an equal trade of information, two men swapping “women, you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them” stories.
    I opened my mouth, wondering where to start. Talking to my dad had just gotten to be so hard.
    “But Charlie. Throwing away her dinner, that was just rude. She was trying to do us a kindness. I was lucky I saw the pan in the sink and figured out what she was talking about, but when she first asked me I was without a clue.”
    I hung my head, unhappy with the shift in mood.
    “I raised you better than that.”
    “You and Mom raised me,” I retorted with a sharpness that startled both of us. I didn’t know why I snapped at him. It wasn’t something I did very often, that was for sure. When the surprise and anger seeped out of his eyes they turned cold and grave and unloving. I knew that look.
    The upshot of it all was that I was grounded until the first day of school, not allowed to leave the house unless it was to do chores. August, dry and clear, was just getting glorious and I would spend the last half of it sitting inside. Then I thought of something really important.
    “But can I go to Junior Lifesaving?” I cried.
    Yes, I could do that—those lessons were paid for.
    Most maddening was the fact that I was pretty much my own warden. He was at work; how would he know if I snuck out during the day? Hadn’t I already proven untrustworthy? How then did it make any sense that I was to police myself? It was the sort of crazy parenting my father employed all the time. He made me give my word and shake his hand and that was supposed to be good enough. If he had been as suspicious as a normal dad I might have succumbed to the temptation to head down to the creek to see if the bear was still around, but because of my father’s faith in me I was completely stuck!
    I saw Kay two Saturdays in a row, and though I gave her intense stares whenever she glanced my way she remained cool and professional with me. I couldn’t decide if she was acting like we didn’t have something special between us because she didn’t want the other students in class to feel slighted or she was acting like we didn’t have something special between us because we didn’t have something special between us.
    The second Saturday was the last lesson. We all practiced everything we’d learned, except, I’m sorry to say, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Kay told us we’d receive our certificates in the mail, and that was it. I lingered after class broke up to see if I could catch her eye, but she went directly into the ladies’ locker room.
    Would I ever even see her again?
    I about went crazy during my incarceration, so bored that I sometimes did chores just to have something to do. The world was still reeling from President Nixon’s resignation, but I didn’t care about anything beyond my own miserable imprisonment. I was just on the brink of greatness, a boy who talked to real bears and put