Read Online Personal Touch by Caroline B. Cooney - Free Book Online

I can enjoy myself. But there’s nothing I enjoy less than hanging around. I guess that’s one reason I never liked coming to Sea’s Edge much. It was always so hard to fill up the time.”
    “Funny,” said my mother dryly. “I thought you succeeded admirably in filling up your summers.”
    It was Tim’s turn to blush. For a moment he was the same gawky colt of a kid whose joints hinged in all directions and whose elbows were always sharpening themselves on my ribs. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I always get carried away whenever I start something.”
    My mother laughed and leaned over and kissed him. We kiss an awful lot in our family and I didn’t think a thing of it, except to wish I had been in a position to do that so casually.
    Tim almost jumped out of his skin.
    “I’m sorry,” said Mother contritely. “I was just trying to say that summers of the past are something we ought to shrug over.”
    “She was just shrugging with a kiss,” I told him.
    “Oh,” said Tim, looking amazed. You would have thought no parent had ever kissed him before. I pictured the two pieces of furniture he had for parents. Maybe none ever had.
    Then I thought about kissing Tim. I would do it rather differently than my mother had. With more passion.
    “If you’re not going to eat your pie, I will,” offered Tim.
    I split it with him.
    A memory of Margaret wanting me to fix her up with Tim flickered through my mind.
    I let it flicker back out just the way it came.
    The only person I wanted to see fixed up with Timothy Lansberry was Sunny Compton.

6
    “S UNNY?” SAID TIM .
    I wrapped my fingers around the telephone, as if it were a true extension of Timothy Lansberry. Any clod who chose this moment to try to exchange a paperback would just have to cool his heels. (Ridiculous phrase for the sweatbox I labored in!)
    “Hi, Tim,” I said.
    “Hi. Listen. Could you do me a big favor?”
    “Definitely.”
    If Tim noticed a difference in my response from what it would have been last summer, he didn’t say so. “Your mother and I are way behind. We’ll never be ready for the Fourth of July sale at this rate.”
    Terrific. He was just calling because they needed another body to scribble markdowns and prepare displays. Oh, well. At least I’d be in the same building with him.
    “I called home,” said Tim, “but the phone must be off the hook or something. My father’s gone back to Albany for a while and Mother is home alone. She gets panicky if I’m not in right on the dot. Could you go over and tell her not to worry? That I’ll be in eventually?”
    “No problem.” The last time I’d had to tell Mrs. Lansberry where Tim was, he’d gotten himself half-drowned off Oyster Point and he was in the Coast Guard cutter getting yelled at for sheer stupidity and possible suicidal tendencies.
    “Great. Thanks.” Tim hung up before I could say one more word. Some romantic conversation. I worked gloomily on a crossword puzzle and agreed with a customer that the Gothic pickings were very slim this week.
    I had never gotten around to asking Tim to go to Margaret’s party with her, and she, being made of tougher stuff than I, called him herself. I figured that was the end of my little daydream, but Tim, incredibly, turned her down. He really appreciated being thought of for the party, he told her, but he had to work, maybe another time.
    All the rest of the week I thought about this refusal. Whatever work he had to do, it wasn’t at the Chair Fair, because Mother closed on Sundays. Therefore, “work” was an excuse to say no.
    Perhaps he was moonlighting as a busboy somewhere.
    Impossible. I kept track of his comings and goings through my dining room window and the only place he worked was Chair Fair.
    Maybe he didn’t like beach parties.
    Impossible.
    Maybe he didn’t like Margaret.
    Impossible.
    Maybe he had some project at home (let’s face it, Tim always had some project at home that he absolutely had to work