The One-In-A-Million Boy by Monica Wood

Author:Monica Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

When she opened her eyes again, it was dark.

“How long was I out?” she asked Belle, who sat cross-legged on the other bed. She looked as if she, too, had gotten a little sleep.

“About three hours. It’s nine o’clock.” She flicked on a lamp.

“Are my clothes dry?” Ona’s humiliation burned afresh: to have piddled like an untrained poodle in front of a young woman with a candy-pink bladder that could hold through a hurricane!

Belle turned her back as Ona dislodged herself from the flimsy nightgown and reclaimed her clothes. Her blouse was irredeemable so she took the shirt Belle had offered her earlier, red with little gold buttons. It smelled wonderful and looked so unlike anything she’d ever worn that it recalled the spirit of adventure with which she’d embarked on the long-ago beginning of this day.

“Is Mr. Ledbetter still here?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” Belle said. “I’ve been sitting here, thinking.” She picked up a pen from the phone table and shook it to get the ink started. “I’m going to help you.”

“I don’t need any help.”

“Oh, I think you do.” She waved the pen momentously, her mood thoroughly transformed. “I can help you get your world record.” Her expression filled with light. No wonder men dueled for her attentions. “Quinn didn’t tell you where I work?”

“You’re a librarian. You work, I presume, in a library.”

“I work at the state archives, and if there’s one thing on this earth I’m good at, it’s tracking down information.”

“That may very well be,” Ona said, her hope redoubling despite herself, “but you can’t get blood from a turnip.”

“Too true,” Belle said. The very air around her appeared to change color. “But you can get blood from a census.”

Ona’s stomach did a little kerflop as a bright image plummeted into her head: A young man at her mother’s door. Suit and tie. Hair like a lit match. Maud-Lucy pattering down the stairs to translate, holding up her skirt to avoid tripping.

“Maine’s census dates back to the seventeen hundreds,” Belle said. She grabbed a notepad printed with the motel’s filigreed logo. “Unless you were born before that, we’re in business.” She was writing now. “Where did you say you grew up?”

Ona stood up. Belle’s blouse fit her beautifully. “Kimball, Maine.”

“And when did you arrive there?”

“Nineteen-oh-four. I was four years old.”

“It’s amazing how much time some people get,” Belle said, lifting her pen. “I mean, there’s no rhyme or reason.”

Her tone was ponderous, private, hard to read. Perhaps she expected Ona to blurt something along the lines of wishing she’d died in the boy’s place. She wanted to believe she’d have agreed, had God asked, but in her secret heart she knew otherwise. It wasn’t that she was selfish, or indifferent. Just too full of her own wants. She wanted to see her hydrangeas bloom come fall. To vote in another presidential election. To see the end of this war. And to find her name in a record book. She preferred life to death, that’s all. Most people did.

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