Crooked by Laura McNeal Read Free Book Online Page A

cats,” Clara said. She hoped this was true, and generally Ham did keep to himself. He was wagging his tail at Mrs. Harper now and looking anxiously around for something to present. He settled on a fake mouse in the corner and got it in his mouth.
    â€œIs he hungry?” Mrs. Harper asked.
    â€œNo,” Clara asked. “He just wanted to give you a present.”
    â€œWell, how polite,” she said, and bent down to pat Ham on the head, prompting him to rear up and place both paws on her flowered dress.
    â€œDown, Ham, down!” Clara yelled, and Mrs. Harper was already stepping back into the house, as if Ham were not Ham at all but some rabid animal. She looked down at her green-flowered house dress, where the combination of wet snow and a dirty front porch had produced a smear of paw prints. “What a mortifying dog,” Mrs. Harper said—is that what she said?
    This was off to a bad start. “I’m sorry,” Clara said.
    â€œBut I suspect that creature is not,” Mrs. Harper said, and it was true that instead of looking sorry, Ham looked like he wanted to jump up again and have his head properly stroked. Mrs. Harper stepped back, dug into the pocket of her dress, and brought out a folded envelope. “Here’s the shopping list,” she said, “and some money, and the shovel is right there.” She pointed to a new shovel leaning against the glass wall of the porch. The white paper envelope was marked STORE. “There are some lunch ingredients in there, so try to be back by eleven if you can,” she said, and after giving Ham another measured look, she went back in the house.
    Clara was sweating by the time she finished half the driveway, so she took off her gloves. She took off her hat and scarf when she started on the sidewalk, and her coat when she got to the mailbox, trying all the time not to think of Amos sitting naked by the phone. Of all the people in the world to think of naked by the telephone, he was probably the least repulsive, but the problem was she couldn’t think of a single person she’d
like
to see naked by a telephone. That was at least one of the important differences between males and females, she thought suddenly, because boys could probably name you ten girls in five seconds they would like to see naked by a telephone.
    Up and down the street, people were throwing shovelfuls of snow onto high drifts, and the busy scraping sound of metal on concrete was pleasant under a blue sky. Now and then, Clara could see the curtains in Mrs. Harper’s living room window ease back, and on those occasions, she made sure Ham was sticking close by. When she had just started pushing the shovel along the edge of the sidewalk to get a clean line, a car moved past her and she saw two boys in the back. Bruce Crookshank was one. Amos was the other. Bruce was pointing at her and holding Amos’s coat by the shoulder so he couldn’t slump down. “Hi, Clara!” Bruce shouted through the half-opened window. “Loved your note!” This was all that could be said before the car turned the corner and Clara was left, humiliated, on the wet sidewalk.
    So Amos
had
shown her ridiculous message to his friends. Maybe he had really called her, then. Bruce was probably listening the whole time, egging him on, and they would laugh all day while she shoveled sidewalks and climbed through drifts to get to the grocery store. Clara turned around to see Mrs. Harper watching her. She waved, held up the white envelope, and attached Ham’s leash for the suddenly tiresome walk to Dusty’s Oldtowne Market. Halfway there, from a phone booth at the Conoco station, she dialed Gerri’s number in hopes she was home by now, but she wasn’t.
    â€œYo, it’s me, Gerri. Speak at the beep and maybe I won’t call back, but probably I will.”
    â€œIt’s me,” Clara said a little forlornly. “Call me as soon as you get home,