Read Online The Theory of Everything by Kari Luna - Free Book Online Page B

the covers. “What did you bring me?”
    â€œChocolate chocolate chip or toffee swirl?” she said, taking ice cream out of a bag. Anytime she punished me, which wasn’t often, she always showed up a few hours later with ice cream. Two pints, one conscience, cleared.
    â€œChocolate,” I said. “I think I’m supposed to be giving you the silent treatment, though.”
    â€œAnd you will,” she said, handing me a pint. “It’s hard to talk with ice cream in your mouth. Scoot over.”
    Mom climbed into bed with me like she had for the first few weeks after Dad left. I’m sure it was supposed to be the other way around—me coming to her—but she always beat me to it, curling up behind me. Jeans brushing pajama legs. Her sobs never as soft as she thought they were.
    â€œYou told the principal you were a sleepwalker?”
    We sat side by side, legs out, backs propped on pillows.
    â€œIt seemed brilliant at the time,” I said. “I didn’t think about having to get a doctor’s note. Or the fact they would eventually figure out your work number.”
    Mom scooted closer so that her leg touched mine.
    â€œQuite the elaborate plan,” she said. “You must really like it here.”
    â€œI do,” I said. And then I looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time all night. “Don’t you?”
    She licked ice cream off her spoon. “I like that you have a friend.”
    â€œSo we’ll figure it out?”
    â€œFor now,” she said, her words like storm clouds, gathering. “There’s one condition, though,” she said. “Lie for your safety, if you have to, but don’t lie to me.”
    She had no idea those were one and the same. One mention of my shaman panda and the car would have been packed by morning, the three of us hundreds of miles away by noon.
    â€œOkay,” I said. “But I have a condition, too. I need you to tell me what was wrong with Dad.”
    â€œNothing was wrong,” she said. “He had an overactive imagination, just like you do. The facts haven’t changed.”
    â€œBut I’ve changed,” I said. “I’m older. Maybe I’ll hear things differently.”
    â€œNot tonight,” Mom said. “I can’t take any more pain right now.”
    Neither could I, I thought. Pain was having a crush that would never happen. Pain was being broken and not knowing how to fix it.
    â€œSo tell me something else,” I said. And even though I knew the story, I asked for it, anyway. “Tell me how you and Dad met.”
    Mom put the lid on her ice cream and set it, along with the spoon, on my nightstand. I was eating mine slowly, letting the chocolate chips melt on my tongue before spooning more in.
    â€œWe met at NYU,” Mom said. She was using her dreamy voice. “Your dad was studying physics, I was studying modern dance, and he showed up at my class every day for a month, trying to join the troupe. Just to be close to me.”
    â€œBut he didn’t dance,” I said, which I knew. He had like a hundred left feet.
    â€œBut he kept showing up,” Mom said. “After a while, the teacher was so enamored with him, she made him an understudy. He never performed, not once, but he didn’t care.”
    â€œBecause you were there,” I said, thinking about Drew. Wondering if he’d text before Monday, even if I couldn’t read it.
    â€œYes, but I ignored him,” Mom said. “The difference was, your father never gave up. And after a few months of strawberry-ginseng-banana smoothies, I fell in love.”
    â€œThat smoothie sounds like the
opposite
of love to me.”
    â€œIt was the eighties,” Mom said, laughing. “We all drank that stuff. Besides, things like that don’t matter when you’re in love. You’ll see.”
    I wondered if I was going to be seeing anytime soon. I handed