Me and Mom Fall for Spencer by Diane Munier Read Free Book Online Page A

hands. I get my flashlight off the
charger and touch my back pocket making sure I have my cell. I go out back and Cyro follows me. The steps are a little rickety but he
knows. He’s slow, but he makes it okay. I walk carefully and he keeps up behind
me. We get to the curb out front and I go across the street and stand aside as
he makes his way up his porch and he gets to his door.
    “I’ll send food with Jason and make sure
he brings the chair,” I say.
    He nods and goes in. I wait a few
seconds and the light comes on. I shoot a last look at my house, alit and noise
coming out the front door, and movement behind the sheer curtains. I move away
into the dark.
    But I’m not far and I hear them, steps
behind me. “Sarah?” he says. “Wait up.”
    And I’m two ways on it, surprised, and
not. Like I said, he follows me easy. I don’t know why.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    Me and Mom Fall
for Spencer
    Chapter Eight

 
    He’s behind me.   When I turn he is looking at me, walking
rapidly to keep up.
    “Hey baby, got a light?” he says in this
gangster kind of voice.
    I shine my flashlight in his face.
    He puts his hand up, “Whoa, Sarah,” he’s
smiling, but he’ll see stars for a while, not the real ones, not the ones on
Mom’s walls, but the kind I just gave him.
    I click the light off. “Why are you
doing this?” I ask.
    “Can’t I walk with you?”
    Nobody walks with me. Others have wanted
to, but they always lack the dedication and I know that, and some things you
don’t give away. If you do, people think you wanted to, and maybe you didn’t
and now they think it’s theirs but you still feel like it’s yours, just
yours…and now you’ve let it go…as if you wanted to…like it was cheap, but it’s
not, it’s the most important thing in the world, the most important thing you
do, the most important thing you have, but if you give it, they take it, and
then you have to bear it…bear that you gave it away.
    “Why do you want to Spencer?”
    “Sarah…I just want to walk with you.” He
is beside me, but not. He’s one step back.
    “Right this minute?”
    He touches my arm and I gasp and stop
and turn a little, my hand on my arm where he touched me like it’s a wound,
like I’m holding in my blood. No one touches me on this walk. Not ever.
    “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” he asks.
    I shake my head, but I keep holding that
place.
    “Are you upset? Hey, don’t be mad. I
just wanted…well you know the neighborhood. Maybe I need to see it, the way you
do. Can you show me?”
    I don’t know. But he’s said it the best
way—that he wants to see it. “There’s no talking,” I say, but I’m torn.
    He nods, puts imaginary tape over his
lips. I nearly groan frustration and start to walk again and in a second he is
right next to me, hands in his pockets but we both know I’m leading.
    So we’ve cleared his house. He doesn’t
know how every night I make myself look at it, for signs of life. I don’t go
too close, but halfway, shining my light over the front of it. Later, when I’m
back in my house, I shudder to think I am that brave. I have to be.
    You’ve heard how true courage doesn’t
mean you aren’t afraid to do something. It means you don’t let the fear stop
you. Well I don’t let the fear stop me, especially when it comes to Frieda’s
house. But now Spencer lives there. Now he’s moved in to the heart of the place
and there’s light on the inside.
    So I want to tell him something, but we
aren’t talking now, and I don’t know him enough. But he’s moved so casually
into her house. He doesn’t know what it means to me.
    Of course it would take an outsider to
overlook the history the rest of us can never overlook. It would take fresh
blood to build upon the old blood, someone ignorant of what went on before.
    I trip. He grabs my arm, but I’m not
going down. I rarely fall. But I trip…a lot.
    So we have passed Frieda’s and now we
pass the extra lot on the other