After the First Death by Robert Cormier Read Free Book Online Page B

Nettie Halversham in front of the Y. She was standing there with a girl Jackie knew. I looked at her and my knees turned liquid and my stomach felt as though I hadn’t eaten for a week. She was not dressed in the usual outfit: jeans and jersey. She wore a blue blouse and a skirt, white with a blue edging. I found myself talking like a crazy man, about all kinds of things, nothing I can recall now, which is just as well. And all the time this happiness was soaring in me because she was looking at me and smiling and laughing at my jokes, whatever they were, and I felt like the most clever, most cool guy in the world. I kept my eyes on her and knew I was in love. I didn’t have to run to a dictionary for a definition of the word and I didn’t have to rush to a doctor to have my pulse taken. I knew I was in love. Irrevocably. I also figured that she was in love with me, that not just me but
we
had fallen in love, the way it was supposed to happen.
    The bus came along and she boarded it with her girl friend and I said, “See you later,” as if I was sending her a secret message and she smiled intimately (I thought) and I got her full name and particulars from Jackie and knew that I would call her up and ask her to go out. On a date. We had a lot of socials on the post and I went through the usual horrors of dancing schools and girl-boy birthday parties but I had never had a date before and didn’t even know what the hell we would do on a date but I didn’t worry about that kind of stuff. I was dealing with destiny here, kismet, fate. And the words of a thousand inane love songs suddenly made sense.
Love will find a way. You are so beautiful to me.
    I called her up, three nights before the seizure of the bus. As I dialed her number, my heart began to beat faster, just like the songs say. When I heard her voice, Imelted. Went limp. I told her who I was. She said: “Who?” The word hung in the air like a bell tolling doom. I told her my name again, about meeting her in front of the Y, and she said, “Oh, yes,” as if she had just drawn my name from a file cabinet and was confirming my existence. We talked awhile and it was like pumping uphill on my bike. Because she left the talking to me. Oh, she was polite and commented on what I said—dropping in
Yes
or
Gee
or
Huh
like coins in a jukebox to keep the stuff coming—but absolutely volunteering no topics herself. I got desperate. I covered school, the weather, the schedule of activities at the Y, the comparison of summer events between Hallowell and the post, and finally ran out of gas. I was tired of the sound of my own voice but was afraid of stopping because I dreaded the terrible silence that was sure to follow. Finally, I asked her if she’d go to a movie with me. Another pause. And then: “Oh, I don’t think so.” Those devastating words and the boredom in her voice. She didn’t simply say
no
. I’d expected
sorry
at least or
some other time
(after all, she was supposed to be in love with me, wasn’t she?) but she merely said: “Oh, I don’t think so.” As if I’d asked her whether it was going to rain tomorrow. Why couldn’t she have lied and said:
I’d love to but
.… Instead she made me feel as though I wasn’t even a member of the human race.
    I hung up after stammering around a bit, sounding like a fool, apologizing, for chrissakes, for having taken up her time and she didn’t say anything at all, but let me flounder and thrash around. And then it was over. Now the terrible part: I still loved her. Her face still haunted me. The world was suddenly a wasteland, cold and lonely, like the far side of the moon. And I thought: Hey, what’s going on here? Why is it that I love her and she doesn’t love me? The world was out of balance, outof kilter, tilted. I realized then why some love songs are sad.
Picking up the pieces of my heart
 …
    Three days later, I was still in ruins, without appetite, anticipating fifty years of this particular agony.