Read Online The Latchkey Kid by Helen Forrester - Free Book Online Page B

the question of leaving school could be left to the parents and the Principal. Hank was grateful to him for his promise not to discuss either matter with anybody.
    Hank went home to lunch.
    His mother was in, seated at her kitchen desk and gloomily going over the month’s bills – her Persian lamb coat made the Hudson’s Bay bill look enormous, and, at the rate she was paying it off, it would take until next Easter to clear it.
    “Like a bologna sandwich?” he asked her, as he made one for himself.
    She grunted assent, and he filled the coffee percolator, set it on on the stove and then rooted around in the refrigerator for the ketchup, while he wondered how to approach the subject of his going to New York.
    “Ma,” he said in a tentative tone of voice, his face going slowly pink with the strain of trying to communicate with his despondent parent.
    “Yeah?” she queried absently. She would wear the Persian lamb to the meeting of the Symphony Orchestra Club tonight, even if it was a bit warm.
    He thrust a sandwich on a plate in front of her. “Ma, I’m going on a trip for a week.”
    Mrs. Stych swivelled round on her stool and forced herself to attend to her son.
    “Y’are?” She sounded puzzled.
    “Yeah. I’m going to New York for a week.”
    He told himself that it was ridiculous for him to be nearly trembling with fear, wondering what form her explosion would take.
    She frowned at him for a moment; then her brow cleared.
    “With the United Nations Debating Club?”
    Hank accepted the temporary reprieve thankfully. Darn it, why hadn’t he thought of that himself? Undermining his mother’s social prestige was one thing, having to tell her about the book himself was another.
    Her face darkened again.
    “Who’s payin’?”
    “I’m going to pay some. You know I got a bit saved. The rest they’re paying.” He hoped she would not ask who “they” were.
    “Well, I guess that’s O.K. When you goin’?” It was typicalof her that, although she regarded Hank as a child, she did not ask who would be supervising the group she imagined would be travelling to New York.
    “Thursday. Be back next Wednesday.”
    “O.K. Y’ father will be home by then.”
    His legs began to feel weak and he sat down hard on a red plastic and chrome chair, while he held his sandwich suspended half-way to his mouth. He remembered Mr. Dixon’s persuasive arguments regarding telling his father about The Cheaper Sex, but he doubted if Mr. Dixon knew what kind of father he had.
    “That’s good,” he said dully, putting down his half-eaten sandwich.
    The book should have been in Tollemarche’s only bookstore for several weeks; however, when Hank casually sauntered in and asked for a copy, old Mr. Pascall said it had not arrived. It would probably come in the next shipment from Toronto.
    Hank had no doubt that, sooner or later, old tabby-cats like the MacDonald woman would get wind of it and would give his mother hell about it. His mother would never get round to reading it, and he hoped fervently that his father would not either. Anyway, he consoled himself, nobody in Tollemarche over the age of forty ever really read a book, though they talked about them.
    He swallowed the last of his coffee and went to his room to inspect his wardrobe. He decided to put his two drip-dry shirts through the washer that night. His one decent pair of dark pants and his formal suit were too small for him. The rest consisted largely of T-shirts and jeans. Mind made up, he returned to the kitchen, picked up his zipper jacket and departed, officially for school, but in fact for the town to do some shopping. His mother, busy checking the T. Eaton Company’s report on the state of her account there, did not bother to reply to his monosyllabic “Bye.”
     
    Albert Tailors, in the shape of old Mr. Albert himself, took one look at him and channelled him to the Teens Room, which was festooned with guitars and pictures of pop singers. But Hank protested