Read Online Reaching Through Time by Lurlene McDaniel - Free Book Online

were low.”She ran to the pot of coffee that Drake had already brewed and filled her travel mug. “Got to go.”
    “Whoa,” Drake said. He was sitting at the kitchen counter that jutted into the family room and served as their informal table. “There’s always time for breakfast.” That was what she always said to him when he was running late on school days.
    “Ha-ha,” she said.
    Drake shoved a protein bar toward her. “Eat this in the car, Mom. You’d never let me run off without breakfast.”
    She juggled her coffee mug and briefcase, snatched up the food bar, got to the doorway and paused. “You going to be all right all day alone?”
    “Haven’t I always been?”
    “You should go out and explore.”
    They’d been in Sanderson, North Carolina, for three weeks. His mother had taken a new and better job there in May and moved them to the town nestled in the Smokies as soon as Drake had finished his sophomore year. Drake knew she felt guilty about moving him away from Ohio and his school and his friends. It wasn’t a big deal to Drake. He’d only had a few friends anyway, and he could attend school anyplace. No love lost between him and Ohio. His consolation prize for the move had been his own car. It wasn’t hot or sporty, but it did give him mobility.
    “I’m going to take a look at this job in today’s paper. You know where Sandstone Mountain is?”
    “Not a clue.”
    “I’ll Google it.”
    “Be careful.”
    He rolled his shoulders. “Aren’t I always?”
    She came back to the table and kissed his cheek. “I love you.”
    “I’ll start dinner,” he said, shrugging her off. “Spaghetti okay?”
    “Hamburger’s already thawed. You call me anytime.”
    She left and Drake slid off the stool and lurched awkwardly toward the desk and computer set up in the family room. He’d been born with cerebral palsy, a birth defect that marked him for life. His left leg was short, and underdeveloped muscles caused a permanent rocking limp. He was spastic, a crip, a gimp, a weirdo. He’d heard all of these terms for himself over the years from the perfectly formed, the physically elite. Many kids with CP were in worse shape; only one of Drake’s legs was affected. He had no learning problems, no uncontrollable tremors, no tendency to drool. Still he’d been branded a “retard” by those with fleshly symmetry.
    Drake turned on the computer and waited for it to boot up. In elementary school his mother had protected him as if he were her wounded wolf cub, even going so far as instituting a schoolwide CP Day to “spread understanding” when he’d been in the second grade. He remembered the embarrassment of being singled out, of hearing kids whisper about him in the halls and cafeteria.She’d meant well, but CP Day had been a nightmare for him. Once he’d hit middle and high school, the last thing he’d wanted was his mother hovering over him and running interference on his behalf. So he took the teasing and jabs from peers stoically.
    The computer screen glowed and Drake called up the Internet, then a map search of Sandstone Mountain. The mountain was sparsely populated, a mecca for wealthy summer residents, and houses were far apart, surrounded by woods. He found homes numbered twelve and fourteen, a good ten miles apart from one another. There was no number thirteen. He grumbled, wondered if the newspaper had given the wrong address, and printed a map. He’d go to both addresses and ask for the professor who’d placed the ad. It was probably a sit-down job, one a cripple like him could handle. He didn’t want to spend the summer trapped at home, but he wasn’t ready to try for an out-in-the-public grunt job either. He wanted
this
job.
    The road up Sandstone was paved—mostly. Drake drove carefully. He’d grown up in a flat part of Ohio, so he wasn’t used to the mountain curves. The higher he got, the rougher the road became. It went from paved to pea-rock to rutted dirt. He finally saw a