Alienated by DAVID O. RUSSELL & ANDREW AUSEON

Author:DAVID O. RUSSELL & ANDREW AUSEON
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ALADDIN
Published: 2009-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

13

“GOOD AFTERNOON, THIS IS CINDY CORNFIELD OF ACTION Six News, Santa Rosa, coming to you live from the house of Walter Sparrow. Or, as he is known today: Vargon’s nephew!” The pretty news lady bent sideways and adjusted her hair in a van mirror. She straightened the collar of her attractive blue suit jacket. Then, burping, she tightened the waistband on her holey gray sweatpants, which no one watching TV could see. “Can you see this zit?” she asked Mike the cameraman.

Mike the cameraman closed his eyes and shivered. When he’d gone to college to direct blockbuster movies, he never thought it would end like this. “You look . ,” he started, and then paused. “Um, good?”

Cindy glared at him and took a drink of water. She was not known for being “good.” She was known for being the face of Santa Rosa news.

Scattered in camps out in front of Walter Sparrow’s house on Carmelina Terrace were members of the media. They had been sitting there on his lawn and sidewalk for nearly twenty-four hours. So it was a given that no one looked good, not even Cindy Cornfield, who had won the Anchorperson of the Year award for the last five years straight. A group of soundmen from different stations had started a poker game on a foldaway card table. A burrito truck had pulled up onto a neighbor’s lawn and was selling food. It was quite a scene, topped off by the Fulton police, who had surrounded the whole area with yellow tape. No one could get in or out.

Not that the yellow tape could ever stop Walter Sparrow.

Inside his garage, Walter sat behind the wheel of his car, keys in the ignition. He couldn’t bring himself to leave. Everywhere he looked there was something that brought back memories. On his visor hung a photograph of him and some of the students at Fulton. The flowers in his dashboard vase were ones that Pam Masters, the algebra teacher, had picked for him. (He’d always kind of had a crush on Ms. Masters.) Even the socks he was wearing were a pair he’d borrowed from Principal Pinkus.

For Walter, leaving Fulton and Santa Rosa County would mean leaving who he was. He liked living there. He liked that there was a free community picnic in Fleet Park every Saturday. He liked that people smiled at you when you walked by, even when you looked terrible and were wearing gray, holey sweatpants. Most of all, he liked how people here didn’t make him do bad things like create black holes or crash star cruisers into satellites. Stuff like that.

He liked that Earth made him good. Not Cindy Cornfield “good” but the kind of good where you find joy in doing kind things for other people.

Now he had to leave, all because of Gene.

Wiping his eyes, Walter pressed the button on the garage door opener. With a chugging rumble, the door lifted. A sea of people waited for him in the driveway. The crowd was so thick he couldn’t even see the asphalt beneath their feet.

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