A Different Me by Deborah Blumenthal

Author:Deborah Blumenthal [Blumenthal, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4976-9885-7
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Published: 2014-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SEVEN

David Craig stops me in the hall outside English. “Can you come to my house after school for mentoring? I have to go home to let the dog out.”

I won’t run into anyone there. And it’s not like I’m afraid of him, unless he attacks me with his camera. The truth is, the last thing I want to do after a whole day at school is hole up in the library.

His brownstone is on West 82nd Street near Central Park. As I walk up the steps to the front door, the first thing I see and hear is a dog. He’s standing on his back legs, leaning against the door, and barking as I wait for David to open it. He’s black and shiny—a Lab, I think.

“Okay, easy, Horace,” David says, holding on to the Lab’s collar as he opens the door so the dog doesn’t jump on me. After sniffing me, Horace immediately rolls onto his back.

“He wants you to scratch his stomach,” David says. I smile at the way the dog’s back leg moves back and forth like he’s running in place when I scratch him. “Horace, after the poet?”

David shakes his head. “After the school. We were driving up near Horace Mann, and we saw him wandering around the street. No collar or anything. It was cold and he looked pathetic, so we took him home with us.” He shrugs. “We named him after the school.”

“Maybe he’s a graduate.”

“Not likely. He flunked out of obedience school.” He looks at me straight-faced. “Maybe you could mentor him.”

“Funny.”

He smiles. “C’mon,” he says, getting to his feet. Horace trails behind us as we go past the front of the first floor, which has a big rolltop desk and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Beyond that, there’s a living room with a fireplace and a spiral staircase in the corner. Out the window I see a backyard with a table and a barbecue.

David’s camera is nowhere in sight when we sit downstairs at the table in the kitchen. Just as we open our books, a younger David clone walks in.

“Hey,” he says to both of us.

“My brother, Jesse,” David says.

Jesse smiles. He’s got good hair. It’s shaggy, well cut. He looks shy, approachable. He opens the refrigerator and takes out a container of milk and then reaches for a box of cookies in a cabinet. A moment later he walks out of the kitchen and I hear footsteps going up the staircase.

I go to the chapter we’re on. When I look up, it hits me that David doesn’t look the same. I knew something was different as soon as I walked in, but with Horace begging for attention, I didn’t pay much attention to David. Now that we’re sitting together, I look at him and see what’s changed.

The eyeliner. His face looks softer, more vulnerable without it.

“You look different.” The words spill out of my mouth. Why didn’t I just be quiet about it?

A half grin. He doesn’t say anything.

“How come?”

“I wash off the eyeliner when I get home.

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