Read Online Leftovers by Heather Waldorf - Free Book Online Page B

Sometimes he gives us geography and history lectures to fill the time. Sometimes he does chemistry experiments or imparts wilderness survival tips. Mostly he tells stories; gruesome Chinese fairy tales and synopses of old Hollywood horror movies are his favorites. It seems that Dr. Happy-All-the-Time has an edge after all. I like it.
    Sometimes Nicholas brings down his guitar. When she found out he played a little, Victoria paid to have it couriered from his grandmother’s house.
    â€œKeeping your hands busy with constructive things is never bad, Nicholas,” she told him the morning she brought it over to the island from town.
    Brant the sicko piped up. “I know how to keep
my
hands busy.” He made a jerk-off motion behind her back.
    Anyway, back to Nicky, pudgy fingers and all. He’s not a bad guitar player. No Carlos Santana, but not terrible either.
    But then there’s Johanna, shrieking out old Celine Dion ballads. Johanna is convinced—
hello, delusional
—that she’ll be a huge star someday. On the bright side, Johanna’s singing keeps the biting insects away. And the dogs love it; they howl in the barn like crazed backup singers.
    When all else fails, Taylor is always eager to offer up some of her tortured poetry for critique.
    Me? I put together ingredients for S’mores. Good enough.

    Tonight Dr. Fred begins his campfire session with a lecture on the history of the Thousand Islands region.
    I can’t believe that the big heap of granite rubble they call Camp Dog Gone Fun is actually a remnant mountain peak—one of more than a thousand remnant peaks poking out of the St. Lawrence River. Join all the peaks together and they make up an ancient mountain chain that was scoured, molded and eventually flooded by several glacial advances and melts.
    I stare into the bonfire’s flames, unsettled by the knowledge that the Thousand Islands were once interconnected. Does it mean that each individual—even me—might actually be part of a bigger “we”? That maybe humanity is just a different type of mountain chain?
    Some people might feel all warm and fuzzy about that possibility. Me? I feel crowded.
    Sullivan isn’t around tonight. Grounded or not, it’s Thursday, which means he’s back in Riverwood, having his legislated weekly visit with his dad. During the school year, when Sullivan lives with his father, he visits Victoria and Dr. Fred every Saturday. Sounds like a complicated pain-in-the-ass arrangement to me, but Sullivan says it’s the only life he’s known since he was three years old. He doesn’t even remember his parents ever living together. He says both of them blame their divorce on Rusty, an Irish setter they owned when Sullivan was a baby. Rusty developed a seizure disorder. During a particularly rough patch, Victoria started spending more time with Dr. Fred than with Sullivan’s dad.
    Oops, as Johanna would say.
    After the divorce, Mr. Vickerson got custody of Sullivan. Victoria got custody of Rusty. Dr. Fred doesn’t seem the type to break up a marriage. Then again, no one would have guessed that my father was a perv either. Who would have thought he’d have had the time, between operating a successful restaurant, taking part in local fundraisers, running six miles a day and being seen around town playing the role of good husband and father?
    Moral of
this
story: Adults can’t be trusted. Maybe
no one
can be trusted. Maybe you can’t even trust yourself.
    Nice world.
    I’m not sorry that Sullivan is away for the night. I need a break. We’ve been spending every spare dog-free,food-free moment in Dr. Fred’s storage shed under a hot bare bulb, working that German shepherd jigsaw puzzle on top of a three-legged ping-pong table propped up with milk crates. The puzzle is big, the pieces are small, the lighting is harsh and Sullivan keeps kissing me, so it’s taken hours and hours of