Read Online Lost Between Houses by David Gilmour - Free Book Online Page B

street, just down a bit, was the Apple Paradise. I used to go there with my neighbour Kenny Withers on a Saturday night and get a great big gooey dessert, one of those apple monsters with maple syrup and whipped cream, the kind of shit kids like. Funny to think we were happy doing nothing more than going out and getting a fancy apple and then going home and watching the hockey game. Hard to imagine something like that could make anybody happy. No girls, nothing. Just an apple.
    I pointed out a couple of these historical landmarks to Scarlet, like they were famous battlefields or something. Even the giant rock in the little parkette where Daphne Gunn dumped me. I told her about how she took me out there one night right after dinner—instead of inviting me into her house, always a bad sign—sat me down on this big rock, and gave me the old axeroo. I walked home like a zombie, it was like I was marching to my death, up the street, in the door, up the stairs, into my bedroom, flopped onto my bed, eyes staring at the ceiling, waiting for something to happen. For it all to end I suppose. Like one of those deer shot in the heart that keeps running, doesn’t know it’s dead yet. Yikes. Not a place I’m keen on returning to. But the funny thing was that if I’d only known that down the road things’d turn out all right, you know, me here with a beautiful girl, all that back there, so far back it was fun to think about, even the grisliest part, well if I’d only known all that, I wouldn’t have been so upset. Man, that sure would have blown Daphne’s mind, her giving me the axe and me popping up like a piece of fresh toast, saying sure, I understand, you’re right, and wandering off home, hands in my pockets, even whistling a tune. Boy, that would have surprised her. But I didn’t know enough. I just walked on home with my head in my hands like a basketball and cringed for the next three months every timesomebody brought up her name. Yeah, I sure handled that one. Next time, I thought to myself, I’ll know better, I’ll just remember today, how everything worked out in the end and I won’t have to go through that bullshit again.
    “Do you think I’m beautiful?” Scarlet said all of a sudden.
    “What? Are you kidding?”
    “No, I’m not.”
    “Yeah, you sure are. You make guys nervous. I mean I didn’t even want to
think
about talking to you at my party.”
    “What’d you think I’d do?”
    “Tell me to buzz off or something. Wouldn’t have surprised me a bit. Some girls, when they’re really pretty, it’s the weirdest thing. They make me feel like I’m
shorter
than they are. You were scary, man.”
    “Yeah?”
    “And I’m not just saying that.”
    “Am I less scary now?”
    I could see we were headed for possible trouble here.
    “Well it’s not like I got you or anything. If that’s what you mean.”
    “No, I knew I liked you right away. The second I saw you. You sort of reminded me of myself.”
    “I remind you of yourself? Jesus, this I got to hear.”
    “I’d probably be like you if I was a boy.”
    “Gee, I don’t think so, Scarlet. I think you’d be like one of those guys in the hallways, you know, in the coolest clothes, button-down shirts and continental pants. There’s a whole cluster of them hang out in front of prayers every morning.”
    “No, I’m not like that at all. You don’t know me very well.”
    She stopped in front of an ice cream store and peeked in the window.
    “Do you want an ice cream cone?” I said.
    “My mother thinks my nose is too blunt.”
    “Your mother told you that? That’s a weird thing for a mother to do. They’re only supposed to tell you the good stuff.”
    “What does your mother tell you?”
    “My mother tells me I have a sensuous mouth.”
    “Oh yeah?”
    “That I will be an excellent kisser.”
    “Really,” she said. And then she turned her head to the side and said something that I didn’t quite catch.
    “What?” I said, but she