Read Online Out of the Blue by Sally Mandel - Free Book Online Page B

attentively. Tears still oozed out, but at least she was thinking now.
    “Did you hate him a lot?”
    “Sure.” The granite slab pressed against my lungs, making it hard to breathe. If she asked how I felt about him now, I knew I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to answer. “One of the things I learned to do was to concentrate on myself instead of him.”
    “I don’t get it,” Michelle said.
    “Well, there were some things I was good at. I decided I was going to get even better at them. Not to show my father, just to make me feel better about myself.” This had all been Ma’s doing, of course.
    “I guess you were a real brain,” Michelle said wistfully.
    “Actually, it was sports I loved. Tennis, especially. I started taking lessons every week and playing on weekends. And if I had a rotten day, I’d put in some extra time on the court. It was a way to balance out the bad stuff. But it could have been something academic, too, I guess. Why not?”
    “Not me. I only got into Cameron because my father’s donating all this money to the new science lab. I’m the stupidest person in the whole school.”
    “You’re a wonderful dancer, Michelle.” I’d seen her in the recitals and it was true. When she was moving across the stage, she shed the self-conscious concerns about her hair and her clothing and just flew, her face enraptured.
    “Oh, I’m only okay. Jennifer’s much better than I am.”
    “Just think about how you feel when you’re dancing.”
    She was silent.
    “Do you want me to talk to Mrs. Phillips?” I asked her. “I’m sure she’d let you have access to the dance studio whenever it’s free.”
    “I guess so. Yeah, I’d like that a lot,” Michelle said. We smiled at one another. There’s that feeling you get when you’re around a fellow foot soldier who’s been wounded in the same war. Michelle and I were foxhole buddies from now on. It was going to be tough on her with such public exposure. There might even be news people and photographers outside the school today, lying in wait to capture her reaction for the gossip-hungry. I would have to talk with the headmaster.
    Michelle spilled her Coke when I yelped and leaped to my feet. I had completely forgotten that I had an appointment with Duncan Reese. I glanced at my watch. Nine forty-five. I was already late.
    “I’m so sorry, Michelle. I forgot I have to see Dr. Reese.”
    “That’s okay.” She stood and swiped at the drops of soda on her suede skirt. “Thanks, Ms. Bolles. Really. Thanks. God, I can’t believe we share the same sorrow.” I figured that had to be straight from the latest rock lyric. “God, I must look awful” , she went on, but before she could reach for her makeup kit and mirror. I grabbed her in a swift hug, something else I wasn’t prone to do. She was a bag of bones, an issue for another day. Then I dashed off to find out if I was fired.
    Duncan Reese was a large rumpled man with a ruddy face and straw-colored hair. There was something of the aged preppy about him, and his politician’s smile and wrap-around handshake inspired knee-jerk mistrust. A lot of people disliked him, but I would probably kill for the man and this is why.
    Before my father made all his money out in California, I was a scholarship student at Cameron. Granted, I made straight A’s, but I was also a pain in the butt, and my mother was worse. She was always protesting something—Cameron’s emphasis on standardized tests, lack of support for students of color, poor nutrition in the cafeteria—the culmination being her one-woman picket line decrying the ouster of my favorite chemistry teacher. He was busted in Central Park one weekend with a couple of ounces of marijuana. Since Ma always likened the criminality of drugs to Prohibition, i.e., that such restrictions were both futile and dangerous, she crayoned a sign and paraded back and forth in front of the school. I was thirteen at the time, and let me say, those were three