Donutheart by Sue Stauffacher Read Free Book Online

me full force. She was ashamed of me—the poor unfortunate who’d been spit on by our science teacher and so become the laughingstock of her new friends. How I managed to stumble back to my own table I do not know. Even Bernie, who normally failed to read the subtle nonverbal cues of others, was shocked into silence by my pale expression.
    “Franklin,” he said, finally. “Are you okay?”
    “All my hopes are dashed,” I replied, sinking into my chair.
    “Why?
Why
didn’t you tell me that I still had Mercurochrome on my forehead?”
    Sarah Kervick swallowed the last of her chocolate milk and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “That orange stuff?” She looked over at Bernie.
    “It’s been there before, Franklin,” Bernie said matter-of-factly. “We thought you knew.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    Helping Out Hope
    Every object has a center of gravity through which the laws of the earth and its magnetic forces act. I think it is safe to say that, most of the time, Sarah Kervick defies gravity.
    For example, an object will remain stable as long as its center of gravity is directly over its base. For a skater, that means directly over the weight-bearing foot. Watching the other girls, it was easy to tell when their center of gravity shifted. Some were able to resist the pull of gravity by leaning in the other direction. Others fell. Repeatedly.
    But Sarah Kervick’s body seemed as finely calibrated as the ancient Egyptian scales of justice. At first, when she turned her skates out and leaned back into a spread eagle, I cringed with the knowledge of what happens to an unstable object. But when I opened my eyes, I found her gliding over the ice, a beatific look on her face, as if the invisible hand of Isaac Newton were pushing on the small of her back.
    Normally, I was not recruited to observe the highly dangerous activity known as contract ice, where up to twenty-five skaters, most of them girls between the ages of ten and eighteen, pay for the chance to practice their routines. Twenty-five girls skating in twenty-five different directions is enough to bring about heart palpitations in the most seasoned air-traffic controller. But my mother’s schedule on certain days made my attendance necessary, and I was told to do my homework in the “snack area” and
not
request that the table be sanitized more than one time. With Sarah just weeks away from her first exhibition, it seemed like the ice arena was becoming my second home.
    My mother was rarely around during these sessions. As soon as we arrived at the rink, she would disappear into the girls’ locker room, emerging near the end of Sarah’s practice flushed and, obviously, worn out from the exertion. She told me there was a ballet barre and some weights in there that the girls used for warming up. Why not take advantage of the facilities?
    “A strong core prevents injuries,” she explained, imitating coach Debbi’s heavy Swedish accent. It sounded suspiciously to me like she was trying to improve her statistics for Paul.
    There were times when my mother felt bad about her neglectful behavior toward her only child and compensated by picking up little gifts for me during her workday. Most recently, I’d scored the updated edition of
Live Safely in a Dangerous World.
So I didn’t dare tell her that I actually enjoyed the time I watched Sarah.
    It all began a few months ago when Sarah took a bad spill while practicing a Salchow. She pulled herself up, skated over to the edge of the rink, and waved me closer.
    “Franklin, did you know that was going to happen?” she shouted over the plastic barrier.
    I nodded yes. Of course I did. Sarah had pressed down too hard on her toe pick, and that slowed her down. She tried to make up for it by cranking around the jump, but that just threw her off balance.
    “You think you can still do that thing we did in baseball?”
    “I’m afraid you need to be a bit more specific than ‘that thing’…?” I shouted back, getting a couple