Read Online One Heart by Jane Mccafferty - Free Book Online

then she called out my name, and told me to come back.
    I suppose that’s the night we became real friends. Raelene’s cabin was a nice place. She had little impatiens on the sills and a stuffed bear sitting next to them, real cute. Screens on the windows with flittery moths all over them. She had two cots, with white sheets and scratchy blankets. And I sat down on the one that was made, and she sat down on hers. She lit a lantern and set it on the floor. On the wall she had taped up some snapshots. Her mother. A lady on a couch with tall, dark hair. She didn’t look like the sort to run away, don’t ask me what I mean by that. Her father in a baseball cap holding a small white dog on the front stoop of a brick row house. Just how I pictured Philadelphia. Another snapshot was Raelene with some long-haired boy with an open shirt. Hambone.
    Soon we had both stretched out. We were there stretched out talking with our eyes on the ceiling.
    Raelene said she felt like she didn’t belong at the camp, that the other counselors didn’t like her, and that she wasn’t good enough with the kids.
    â€œYou could get yourself some preppy clothes from a catalog and do something cute with your hairdo,” I told her. “And new shoes. But why would you want to? What the hell do you care?”
    â€œFeeling alone gets old,” she said. “I never felt like I was the weird duck back in Philly.” She laughed. “Up here’s like a different country. I never thought I’d get homesick for Philly, man.” Laughed again. Then she told me a bit about her father. “When I left he was high as a kite. I tested him by saying I was going off to Texas to get married. He was so high, and so was Peggy, that’s his girlfriend, they just got teary eyed and said, ‘Aw, you’re gettin’ married! You found true love! Aw, Raelene, that’s so sweet.’”
    I didn’t know what to say to that. It was quiet, then Raelene said, “You know, Gladys, I been up here worrying he’s dead.”
    â€œHe’s fine,” I told her, “I can feel it.”
    â€œYou can feel it?”
    â€œSure. I can feel things.”
    â€œPsychic?”
    â€œHell no, I just feel things.”
    I remember she laughed too hard and too long at things like that, then she’d catch her nervous breath.
    â€œSo you think my dad’s fine, huh?”
    â€œYes he is, and he’ll be fine in the future too. He’ll find his way. So don’t fret it.”
    Was it true that I could feel this? I thought I could. Or did I just assume that everyone would be fine, in one painful way or another? I thought I could see her father sitting in a dark kitchen at night with a radio ball game. A man in a dark cap wondering why he ruined his life. The radio ball game reminding him he was once half normal. He was once a boy who collected baseball cards. It’s true I could feel things like that. I could sometimes look at a person and see their mother and father or maybe their true love, even before they showed their snapshots. Just some trick my mind played?
    I could feel certain things about James too, my lost husband. I knew he was alive, and living far away. I even had a sense he was in a warmer climate.
    Slowly but surely, I worked James right into our talk without even knowing I was doing it. Once I started, I felt a kind of pressure inside. Like the words had been waiting to come out. Waiting for years. I’d started, and there was no shutting my big trap now. The words were coming out.
    Of course Raelene was curious. She was interested in me. In every little chirp that came out of me. Interest is bait . I mean someone interested in you like this can make you talk, if you feel the interest is pure, and not just some kind of idle curiosity. Most people you meet in life, let’s face it. They’re not interested, they just got a case of idle curiosity.
    But then someone