Skipped Parts: A Novel (GroVont Trilogy) by Tim Sandlin

Author:Tim Sandlin [Sandlin, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Published: 2010-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

“If you are pregnant, we could get married and live in an apartment. I’ll find a job.”

“Oh, Sam, don’t be a squirrel.”

***

Being a squirrel was the worst thing that could happen to a boy. Kids would do anything, no matter how bizarre or dangerous, to avoid squirrelhood; all except for the really squirrelly ones like Rodney Cannelioski who didn’t know Shinola. I kind of felt sorry for him. He put more salt on his food than anyone I ever saw. We would sit at the cafeteria table and watch him shake salt over his square slab of pizza for five minutes. You could see it caking up on the awful stuff that passed for cheese.

No matter what a chump you think you are, you never have to look far to find someone else in worse shape—only they don’t seem to know it. Lydia says it’s not nice to make empty, worthless people see themselves in a true light. “They just get angry and nothing changes anyway.”

The conversation with Maurey where I suggested marriage took place next to our Oldsmobile on Saturday right before she and Lydia drove over to Dubois to see the doctor. Maurey had been nervous all week and I knew she was scared—pregnancy is a big deal whether you keep the kid or not—but she would never admit it. She seemed somehow mad at me, as if I’d imposed on her.

The closest we came to talking about the baby was Wednesday after geography when I asked her if she felt like coming by for practice that night.

“We practiced enough, Sam. We’re through with practice.”

“Does that mean we’re ready for the real thing?”

“I’m ready to go back to sixth grade. You can go anywhere you want.”

Chuckette walked up and did the dirty-look-at-me thing for talking to another girl and Maurey went off to the ladies’ room where I knew she got sick between second and third period every morning.

***

Lydia put a box of Sterno and her toothbrush in the backseat for their drive to Dubois. She was always afraid the car would break down fifteen miles from any people and she’d freeze to death behind the wheel and be discovered dead with bad breath. She hid boxes of matches all over town in case the power failed in a blizzard. And I know for a fact she stashed a spare toothbrush in the silver toilet-paper tube in the women’s John at the White Deck.

“Want anything from Dubois?” she asked before they took off.

“Spider-Man comic books.”

“Sammy, you are so infantile.”

Maurey sat on the passenger side, staring out the window, not looking at me. It occurred to me we hadn’t made eye contact, much less love, in a week.

After they left I felt kind of flat, like you do when you’ve been waiting for something interesting to happen, then it does, and afterward it’s the same old same old. Being a father is supposed to change things, but it was still winter and I still had to go to a

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