Read Online I Don't Have a Happy Place by Kim Korson - Free Book Online Page B

street. He wore a tweed newsboy cap, faded jeans, and a trench coat that reminded me of the green guy on Sesame Street who wanted Ernie to buy an 8. The rest of the fourth graders were skipping rope or pelting balls at each other until someone cried, and I was busy singing the entire score of Bye Bye Birdie , alone. The man walked over to me, stopping on the other side of the metal diamond-patterned fence we sometimes got our lips stuck to in winter. He didn’t say hello, just looked at me and stuffed his fat hands into the front pockets of his Wranglers.
    â€œXYZ,” I said, giving him the once-over.
    â€œWhat?” he said.
    â€œXYZ,” I said again, directing my eyes to his lower half.
    â€œWhat?”
    Didn’t this guy ever go to summer camp or have recess? Was he retarded? XYZ , ABC gum, A-D-I-D-A-S —these were kid codes and some of our best. Clearly he’d been a child at some point. How did he not know what I was talking about? I exaggerated my speech, going real slow so he could follow.
    â€œX. Y. Z.” His blank face was starting to annoy me.
    While waiting for him to catch on, I shielded him from the other kids on the playground and also from Madame Bray, who was on recess duty and very well might have been one of the bad guys from Scooby-Doo . Recess had just started and I had all the time in the world to wait for this turkey to crack the code and zip up his fly. He stared at me and I sent ESP toward his zipper and, finally, after I’d pretty much spelled it out for him, his eyebrows jumped up, and he said, “Oh! You mean this?,” to which I muttered, “No, doy—what took you so long?”
    His eyes stayed on mine as he fiddled with his zipper. The whole affair should have taken seconds but he fished and troweled down there with real concentration, like he’d lost his keys or something. A swift nod of his head signaled that he was all set so I nodded my own head to double-check that he’d finally zipped his fly, only to see that he’d pulled out what was supposed to be tucked in . There it was, drooping out of his pants, thick and pink and a little floppy, like those Jewish salamis Zaida Max sometimes brought over from the Snowden Deli. He grinned. My ankles tingled. I shuffled back a few feet. He didn’t make a move and I held my breath. Silence hung in the air like his naked wiener. And then he ran off.
    He was halfway down the block when I heard a deep voice behind me.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” It was Anne Irene Pasquale. A pint-sizer with rodent eyes and a mother who I was convinced was the inspiration for all those V. C. Andrews books girls read at camp. Mrs. Pasquale once made me eat fettuccine Alfredo with a glass of milk—both of which she said I asked for, both of which I despised—so I cried but finished what was in front of me anyway, worried she’d lock me in a closet.
    â€œWell, why are you just standing here? We’re skipping.”
    I followed her pointing finger to the group of French girls, their pink rubber rope snapping the ground.
    â€œIt’s okay,” I said. “I’m gonna stay here.”
    â€œToo good for us?” said another girl, who’d marched over to collect Anne Irene Pasquale.
    â€œNo,” I said, trying to sound like a hellion.
    Nathalie Tremblay put her arm around Anne Irene Pasquale, as if she were her property. “Come on, Anne. Let’s go.”
    There were only a handful of English-speaking girls at Collège International Marie de France, the French private school I’d attended since kindergarten, an institution known for its challenging academic programs and educators who hailed from France, thereby teaching us Parisian and not French-Canadian French. The leaflet boasted children of all ethnic diversities and claimed to be nondenominational and open to speakers of all languages. Loosely translated, that meant 99 percent white Catholic French kids