All We Know of Love by Nora Raleigh Baskin Read Free Book Online Page B

for Carson. And the love she had for reading and dreaming of all the places she would travel. Perhaps the love Carson felt for her was just slightly different from the love she felt for him. If there had been another word, a more perfect word, maybe things would be better understood. Suddenly, Lorraine felt unbelievably hungry, almost a burning, though she knew no food would be satisfying.
    The movie ended.
    “Will somebody get the lights?” the sub called out, and when the room lit up again, she acted surprised that there were only five kids left in the room. She kept shaking her head as she handed out the work-sheet questions.
    “To be completed in class today.”
    Lorraine looked down at the paper on her desk. What would happen to her next? Even if she skipped ahead, past telling her parents and grandparents, and friends, what would happen? She clicked the lead down into her mechanical pencil but didn’t write anything.
    The bell rang.
    “Everyone turn in your work sheets,” the sub called out loudly, as if she were still talking to an entire class. Lorraine wrote her name at the top of the paper and turned it in, completely blank.

“Y our
what
is leaving? Your bus?” Lorraine is talking to me, but I can barely hear her.
    My head is starting to hurt, as if I’ve had this horrible headache and I am only now just realizing it. I feel my heart start to tighten with fear, the little-kid kind of fear, where everything looms large.
    I am stuck here in . . . where am I?
    Lorraine tells me I am in Craigstown, Maryland.
Where?
Dear God. Now surely I am going to cry. Or throw up. I feel suddenly nauseous again, only more so.
    “What am I going to do?” I am asking no one in particular. I think I am shouting.
    “That was your bus?” Lorraine asks.
    “That was my bus.”
    “To Florida?” Now she is shouting as well.
    I nod.
    “Oh, shit.”
    Now we are both quiet. There are only a few other people in the diner. There is a man five stools down from me, and an older couple, a man and woman in a booth by the window, and they all seem interested in my dilemma, like they’ve got nothing better to do.
    They probably don’t.
    My mouth is opening and closing like a fish. My mind is clicking into place, sorting through my limited options.
    Giving up, calling my dad.
    Getting to the nearest bus station and buying another ticket.
    Money. I wouldn’t have enough to get home.
    Calling Adam?
    Ha. Good one.
    Giving up and calling my dad.
    Fainting.
    Fainting may turn out to be my best alternative after all. I can feel the blood rushing to my head, or away from it. My fingers are starting to tingle.
    “Maybe you can catch up to them,” Lorraine says, and we both look out the window at the traffic. The bus is stopped at an intersection about an eighth of a mile ahead. Red taillights blink on and off. I can see the entrance signs to Interstate 95 and for a long second I have an image of myself as one of those superheroes in cartoons who run really fast, a blur of color streaking behind.
    I look back at Lorraine.
    “I mean, get a ride or something,” she says. “Does the bus stop again?”
    The schedule.
    Yes, I think. The bus does stop. I remember. In New York City, New York. In Baltimore, Maryland. In Richmond —
    “Yes, in Baltimore,” I say quickly. “Is that near here?”
    Lorraine nods. “Sort of.”
    “Hey, Del. Ain’t you going to Baltimore?” the man beside me at the counter says out loud. He looks like something out of one of those save-the-farm movies. He is white, with a wrinkled face, dirty overalls, and a John Deere cap on his head. He is talking to the couple in the booth. He pronounces
Baltimore
as though it were only two syllables and with no
T
:
Bal’more.
    The man in the booth doesn’t say anything but nods his head up and down, for an extended amount of time. I guess he is going to Baltimore.
    “That’s a bad neighborhood over there by the bus station,” the female half of the booth couple says. I