Walking Backward by Catherine Austen

Author:Catherine Austen [Austen, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV000000
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2009-09-30T20:00:00+00:00

Friday, August 24th

The decisions that turn out to be important in your life aren’t always about important things. “Do I go skydiving?” is something you’d take your time deciding. But other decisions seem too small to matter. Like, “Should I have a look under the driver’s seat to make sure there’s no snakes in the car that’ll scare me stupid when I’m on the highway going a hundred kilometers an hour between a concrete barrier and a hardwood forest?” Who would ponder that?

There’s no word yet on whether Mom will get a Darwin Award. I didn’t put a proper subject on my e-mail. I chose the “Miscellaneous” category. I asked if someone would qualify if they died because of a phobia. I gave Mom’s example, and I provided a list of smart things she did, like writing two books on medieval plays that stupid people never even heard of.

Mitchell came by our house on Wednesday night with a file box full of stories about Mom from the people she worked with—students and professors and secretaries and even the cleaners, who said Mom was friendly and kept her office neat. One story was totally weird. It was about a student named Ben who had a crush on Mom. He sent her flowers and presents every day. He dropped by her office and hung around outside her classes and creeped people out. Mom wasn’t even nice to him—she took out a restraining order and acted like he was invisible. I thought he must be the one who put the snake in her car. But Mitchell told me Ben was in jail at the time for attacking another student. That says a lot.

I told Mitchell I’d read that one in eight female university students are stalked every year. I asked him if he thought that was true. He said, “Yes. You wouldn’t believe how many young men are basically insane, Josh.” I thought that was a very negative thing for a professor to say. Then Sammy ran up, and the girl Power Ranger kissed Mitchell’s arm and said, “Stay with us, my dear and true friend.” Mitchell just nodded like that was his closing argument.

Sammy’s Power Ranger never stutters. I mentioned this to Dad, and he asked, “Why would she stutter?” I said, “Because Sammy stutters.” Dad said, “Sammy doesn’t stutter.” I said, “I-I-I-I think he-ee-ee-ee-he does.” Dad said, “Oh, that. That’s not a stutter.”

Since two out of three men in my family are insane, Mitchell is probably right to believe the crazy-stalker statistics.

It was very nice of him to bring the stories over. He typed them up and printed them out with headlines and clip art and put it all in a report cover. We’re calling it the Professor Book. It’s mostly boring, and the stories have nothing to do with me and Sammy or Dad. They don’t belong in the Mom Book. Even if Mom were alive, we’d never know those stories, unless we found out about the stalker guy when he got out of jail.

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