Traveling Light by Lynne Branard

Author:Lynne Branard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-11-28T13:14:49+00:00

chapter thirty

BLOSSOM and Dillon are saying good-bye to each other and I’ve snuck away. I have the two of them in my line of sight, but I’m far enough away that I’m not eavesdropping on them and they can’t hear me call Phillip.

We’ve stopped at a hotel, a Best Western, just off the interstate, where Dillon’s uncle is supposed to meet us in about an hour. We got here early, and I am about to make my first telephone call to the boy I have loved since I was twelve. I stick the phone in my back pocket and wipe my sweaty hands on the sides of my legs and then give them a good shake. I roll my head around, loosening up my neck, trying to get up my nerve.

I watch as Casserole glances over in my direction and then drops his head into a clump of clover. He thinks I won’t do it.

The last time this happened I was fourteen. It took me all afternoon to get up my nerve. I must have walked past the phone in our kitchen a hundred times, then upstairs to my room and then back down again. I paced and practiced what I would say. I drank full glasses of water and fixed my hair and brushed my teeth, did a few sit-ups, and made the trek again from my room to the kitchen and then back to my room again. I still remember watching every minute tick past on the clock in the den as I paced by it.

It was early November and Phillip and I were study partners in biology. I still don’t know how that partnership came to be, but at the time I was certain it was divine intervention, and only an hour after the assignments were given I was already planning our wedding. The science project was to dissect a frog in class, and even though I had helped organize a school PETA committee and could have been excused from the biology assignment due to my noted ethical conflict, I would have gone gigging with Dad at the Neuse River and brought in my own toad if it meant I could stay Phillip’s partner.

The classes and the dissection went fine; we made the incisions and we talked and laughed and I acted all grossed out like the other girls, but the truth of the matter is that I have never loved science like I did the week we studied amphibians. I was practically ready to become Mr. Daniel’s assistant. I lived for that class and I rocked the project.

For the final assignment we were supposed to answer questions and fill in a blank illustration of the frog and label its parts. I had done most of the paperwork before the class was even finished, toiling away happily while my partner cleaned up our experiment and stopped to talk to some of the other guys on the football team who had gathered in the back of the room.

However,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.