The Good Father. Diane Chamberlain

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СКАЧАТЬ one more thing that was going to set me apart from my friends.

      “It’s not like I’m exactly straining myself in there,” I said.

      “And I’m going to drive you to school from now on.”

      “Dad,” I said. “You have to get to the university early.”

      “I’ll rearrange my schedule.”

      “What’s the difference if you drive me or I ride the bus?” I felt him chipping away at my freedom. He’d always been super overprotective. I had the feeling it was going to get a lot worse.

      “You have to walk to the bus stop and there’s just too much … excitement on the bus.”

      “No, there’s not! What are you talking about?”

      “Just … humor me, okay? I want your life to be as easy and peaceful as possible.”

      What he wanted was to be with me every minute. Protecting me. Suffocating me. Soon, he’d have me chained to his side.

      For the first time that night, I understood real fear. In bed, I felt my heart pounding against my ribs and heard the blood whooshing through my head, and I was afraid to go to sleep. My mother had died in her sleep, her heart stopping without warning. So I stayed awake for hours listening to every echoey thump, like I could somehow keep my heart going if I just paid attention to it.

      My father drove me to school the next morning. I caught up with my friends as they got off the bus and they were all talking about a boy my best friend, Sherry, liked and a party they all wanted to go to and how Sherry hoped the boy would kiss her there and how maybe there’d be beer and weed. I couldn’t find a way into their conversation and they forgot to slow down for me as we walked into the school. Sherry and I broke away from the rest of them as we headed for our science class, and we didn’t seem to have much to say to each other. I could hardly keep my eyes open, worn out from a nearly sleepless night. While my friends had been dreaming about boys and parties and getting drunk, I’d been doing my best to stay alive.

      There was a new boy in our science class. We sat at two-person tables, and since the boy who usually sat next to me was absent, Miss Merrill stuck Travis Brown in his place. He looked more like he belonged in the sixth grade than the eighth. Short and skinny. When I handed him the stack of papers Miss Merrill wanted us to pass around, he didn’t look me in the eye. He had these really long eyelashes and thick hair that hung over his forehead. He looked like a girl and he seemed really sad. He was the kind of boy who’d be a target for some of the idiot bullies at my school.

      “Robin,” Miss Merrill said from the front of the classroom, “after class, please share the assignments from the last few weeks with Travis so he can get caught up to the rest of us.”

      “Okay,” I said, because I couldn’t really say I didn’t want to. From a few rows in front of me, Sherry turned to give me an I’m glad she asked you and not me kind of grin.

      The last thing I wanted to do after class was hang out with this weird new kid, so I told him I’d email him the assignments that night. As I was walking out of class, though, Miss Merrill called me to her desk.

      “I picked you to help Travis for a reason,” she said to me. “His father died recently. I thought you might be able to understand what he’s going through.”

      “My mother died a long time ago,” I said. “It’s not really the same.”

      “Isn’t it?” She raised her eyebrows.

      “Not really,” I said again, but as I walked to my next class, Travis’s email address and phone number in my pocket, I knew she had a point. We were both half-orphans. You never got over that.

      I emailed him the assignments that night, but when he didn’t understand something I’d typed, I impulsively decided to call him.

      “Miss Merrill told me your father died,” I said, after explaining the assignment to him. “My mother died when I was four. So I think that’s why she picked me to help you.”

      “Not really the same,” he said.

      “That’s what I told her.”

      “You’ve had your whole life to get used to it.”

      “It’s still terrible,” I said. “I don’t remember her very well, but I still miss her. Miss having a mother.”

      He was quiet. “My father was so cool,” he said after a minute.

      “Do you have brothers and sisters?”

      “No. You?”

      “No.” I felt the loneliness suddenly. Mine. His. “It’s hard.”

      “Yeah, it sucks. And then we had to move on top of it. We couldn’t afford our house in Hampstead anymore and my mother has friends at the church here, but I hate it. We’re renting this old dump. I hate your stupid school, too. The beach is the only good thing about living here. My father always took me to Topsail and we’d hang out on the beach.” It was like I’d plugged him in and suddenly all these words were spilling out of him.

      “Where do you live?” I asked.

      “Carolina Beach.”

      “Oh.” I never hung out with the Carolina Beach kids at school. My father had always seemed to look down on them, an attitude I guessed I’d picked up without meaning to.

      “What about you?” he asked. “Where do you live?”

      “In a condo in Wilmington near UNC, where my father teaches.” We talked about our neighborhoods and I knew we were living totally different lives. Mine was clean and orderly and middle class and his sounded sort of thrown together in an emergency.

      “At least you have friends here,” he said, “I’m starting all over.”

      “I used to have friends,” I said. “Not so much anymore.” Wow, was that true? I felt like I was finally admitting it to myself. When was the last time Sherry called me instead of me calling her? When was the last time she texted me? My friends were moving on. Leaving me behind.

      “What do you mean?” he asked.

      “They’re … I don’t know. They’re changing in a way I’m not. They don’t talk about anything important anymore.” I made it sound like I was leaving them. Not the other way around.

      “Most girls are like that,” he said. “Airheads.”

      “Major generalization.”

      “Maybe.”

      He told me about his old friends in Hampstead and how cool they were. I told him who was okay at my school and who he should watch out for and then we started talking about music we liked and before I knew it, it was ten o’clock and Daddy was knocking on my door telling me to go to bed.

      “Is that your father?” Travis asked.

      “Yeah. He wants me to get off and go to bed.”

      “It’s СКАЧАТЬ