Read Online The Summer I Learned to Fly by Dana Reinhardt - Free Book Online

getting that fluttery feeling about Emmett on the couch that night. I’d let my guard down.
    While she packed a bag with my dinner, Mom told me she had to stay late at work for the third time in eight days. I’d already taken out the last of the day’s trash and the extra cheese and bread. The front doors were locked. Swoozie had left early for a doctor’s appointment. Nick and Becca had ridden off in their his and hers helmets.
    “What do you have left to do?” I asked, gesturing around the shop. It was immaculate. Counters cleaned, floors swept, cases closed.
    “Birdie,” she said with exasperation, like I was a toddler on my hundredth why question of the day. “I have a crazy amount of paperwork to do. Bills to pay. Ledgers to balance.”
    “You aren’t going anywhere?”
    “Just to my desk.”
    “You aren’t going out in a silver car?”
    This flew from my mouth before I stopped to think, and the minute it was out there in the space between us I wished I could pull it back in.
    “Whatever do you mean?” she said carefully.
    “Nothing.”
    “It didn’t sound like nothing.”
    I leaned over and hugged her. This caught her off guard, and it took a beat before she wrapped her arms around me. I held on to her tighter than I had in a long time. I squeezed her, hoping that it might somehow undo the conversation I’d started, because I didn’t want to know.
    I wanted to believe she’d be at her desk tonight. Paying bills. Balancing ledgers. So I held her like I did when I was younger, when that was all it took for everything to be right in the world.
    “It was nothing,” I said again, and I took my dinner-in-a-bag and rode home on my bike.
    I put the bag in the fridge and ate a bowl of cereal instead. I was too lazy to boil water and too sick of pasta to face whatever she’d given me. I changed into my pajamas while it was still light and I put some of Mom’s music on the downstairs stereo. Nothing was on TV. I scanned the bookshelf for something to read. I wished that I could draw or paint or do something, anything, well enough that I could lose myself in it and forget everything else. I turned the music up louder, but not so loud that I didn’t hear the knock at the door.
    Other than the fear of fire and the larger fear of nuclear war that was always in the background, we were pretty carefree around my house. Mom didn’t lecture me about safety. She trusted me, trusted the universe enough to let me stay home alone and ride my bike wherever I wanted and not have to account in detail for my time away from her. I could say I showed a friend around town, for example, without being given the third degree.
    However, when home alone I was to keep the front doorlocked. I was not to open it to anyone. Packages could wait for delivery until the next day or sit out on the doorstep. Nothing was for sale that I needed to buy. No petition required my signature.
    Standing there listening to the second round of gentle knocking, I couldn’t remember a single time anyone had come to the house while I was home alone. I’d never been put to the test until now.
    Round three.
    And then a whisper: “Robin?”
    There was only one person who would say my name like that. I unlocked the door.
    He stood under the porch light.
    “Hi,” he said. There was something apologetic in his posture. At least, that was how I decided to take it. He was sorry for disappearing from my life for a week.
    “Hi.”
    He smiled and brushed his black hair out of his eyes.
    “Do you want to come in?” I asked.
    He wiped his feet on our doormat. He’d have won Mom over with that single gesture.
    He looked around the living room, standing still as if waiting to hear whether anyone else was in the house.
    “I’m alone,” I said.
    “I saw that your mom’s still at the shop, so, you know, I figured I’d find you here by yourself.”
    She’s at work , I thought. Just like she said .
    He still didn’t move. He was listening to the music, a