After by Francis Chalifour Read Free Book Online Page B

valley. She’d been there since September, but I only actually noticed her in the spring.
    Houston saw me doodling her name on my three-ring binder. He passed me a note.
    “Forget it. She only likes guys who shave.”
    On the way home from school I stopped at the drugstore and bought a package of plastic razors. I locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub to read the instructions on how not to slit my throat in French and then in English. I looked at myself in the mirror, and thought:
Papa, I could sure use some advice right about now.
    Luc pounded on the door and I jumped.
    “Let me in, Francis! I have to pee.”
    “Hold on, Luc.” I’d cut myself in five places. I stuck bits of toilet paper on my face, like I remembered Papa doing. I didn’t want to think about what I’d look like tomorrow morning in French class. Julia liked guys who shave. I didn’t know where she stood on guys who looked like a double pepperoni pizza.
    I needed Papa’s advice badly, not only about cars and shaving and stuff, but also about girls. I had been friends with Caroline and Melanie for years, but the pathetic fact was that I knew absolutely nothing about girls except that they smell good and giggle a lot. I had never kissed a girl.

    I finally emerged from the bathroom and a desperate Luc pushed by me. Maman was at the linen closet in the hall, putting away freshly ironed sheets.
    “My poor baby, what did you do to yourself?” She took my chin in her hand.
    “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “Oh! I see. You tried to shave!” She looked at me fondly.
    She had said
tried.
    “No. I thought I’d dab your red lipstick all over my face to see if you would notice.” I could tell that she was trying hard not to smile.
    “Next time, ask me and I’ll help.” She gave me a quick kiss and turned back to her nice, orderly laundry. I was furious.

8 | H ELP
    I t was Friday. The highlight of my day would be my appointment with the school psychologist. I’d rather have stuck pins in my head. It was Maman’s idea. I was supposed to see him twice a week, right after math class. His office was beside the library and across the hall from the boys’ washroom on the second floor. I was terrified that somebody would see me coming out of his office. The Suicide’s Son times the Shrink equals Weirdness squared.
    Anyway, that’s what I used to think, and for the first couple of weeks I held on to the idea like a dog with a bone. To be honest, I was so uncomfortable being there that I don’t remember much of what happened the first hour. Mr. Bergeron was fortyish, balding, and wore big thick smeared glasses on his round face. There were photos of his sons on his desk–I guessed that’s who they were–and a Rubik’s Cube. I was about to learn the manowned, and played with, a Rubik’s Cube. Nerd alert. I wrote
Rubik’s Cube
four times in my notebook. It proved to be an excellent time filler. Try it.
    Meanwhile, Mr. Bergeron was also busy scribbling on his yellow note pad, but I doubt that he was writing
Rubik’s Cube.
His silence was getting on my nerves.
    “Do you play any sports?” I thought I’d get the ol’ conversation ball rolling.
    “Yes. Sometimes I play tennis with my two sons.” I’d guessed right. I thought that his sons were lucky–not to have a father like Mr. Bergeron, but simply to have a father.
    “How old are they?” I looked at the photo on his desk.
    “Fifteen and seventeen.”
    “Are you teaching them to drive?”
    “We don’t have a car.”
    I’m supposed to get help from a grown man who doesn’t own a car? “But if you had one, would you?”
    He put his grease-smudged glasses on his desk. “I don’t think so. They’re too young.”
    “But will you teach them someday?”
    “Maybe.”
    A long silence ensued. I don’t know where that word came from but I wrote it neatly under
Rubik’s Cube
in my notebook. He wrote something on the yellow pad, put it in his briefcase and