Read Online Ghost Time by Courtney Eldridge - Free Book Online Page A

asked, leaning in, trying to get a better look. Gloves, she said. He’s wearing gloves, and just then, Cam walked in, coming back from the bathroom, and he rolled his eyes. I could tell he knew the picture, because the way he nodded his head, like, let’s get this over with already. Karen reached for the sake bottle and poured herself another glass, then she goes, One year, just before he turned four, we bought Cam a bicycle for Christmas. Cam was
so excited
, he literally peed his pants, and Cam goes, Is this necessary? Karen waved him off: He loved it—he was over the moon, so happy with his new bike, she said, talking to me. And because he’d woken us up at five o’clock in the morning to open Christmas presents, by ten, we all took a nap. At least I thought we were all taking naps, but, turns out, when we woke up, we found him, sitting in the middle of the living room, with his new bicycle in pieces all over the floor.
    I looked at Cam, and he knew I was looking at him, scratching his chopsticks across the pat of wasabi on his plate. It’s so funny when I see him like that, like I forget sometimes that there’s another side of him, the person he is with his mom, in private. A boy, a son. What happened? I asked, and Karen took another sip, and she goes, Well. I looked at his dad, and then his dad said, Cam, you did a great job taking that bike apart. Now you have to put it back together, and I didn’t think either of us took him seriously. But then the damndest thing happened: he did. Took him two days, but that’s exactly what he did: Cam put the bike back together. Soon after that, he discovered the vacuumcleaner, and the television, the DVD player, and my computer—. All right, Cam said, and we both smiled. Well, Karen said, pushing her chair out. Listen, you two, it’s getting late. Cam, you take Thea home, and I’ll clean up, she said, standing.
    We got in the car, and he pulled out, and then, when we reached the end of the block, he goes, Thee, I want to show you something, and he turned left instead of right, heading back into town. We passed the high school, and at first, I had this crazy thought that he might want to break in—Cam has a devious side, trust me. But a minute later, we pulled in behind the town baseball field, about eight blocks from school, on the other side of town. It wasn’t lit, because they never light the field during winter, and Cam pulled around back, behind these big metal trash bins, which is where a lot of kids drink and get high on weekends. Look at this, he said, turning his high beams on this big gaping hole in the chain-link fence. Isn’t that beautiful? he said, staring at this blown-out hole the size of a baseball like it was a double rainbow.
    I could tell, just looking at him. I mean, you could see the numbers he was writing on the chalkboard of his brain, computing the pitch, velocity, angles of the baseball bat, writing the whole story of how a single ball tore a hole right through time and space. It turned him on, I could just tell, but it was a little violent, too, almost like he wanted to get his fingers in the gouge and tear it wide open. If the fence was made of flesh, you’d call it carnal, but it was exactly the same, the way his brain hummed, like something you feel in your gut, but deeper, between your legs, just looking at this hole. What are you thinking, Thee? heasked, catching me studying him, and I said, Guess someone hit a home run. Looks like it, he said, smiling, grabbing my hand. Except that no one’s played a game here all winter: I asked the groundskeeper. Then someone must’ve snuck in, I said, shrugging my shoulders.
    Cam goes, Thee, did I ever tell you about the bird in the bottle? And I shook my head no. It’s an old riddle, he said, and the riddle is this: There’s a bird trapped in a bottle. So how do you get the bird out of the bottle without harming either the bird or the bottle? And I thought about it, but shook my head, no idea.