Safe Harbor by Judith Arnold Read Free Book Online Page A

literature.”
    “I didn’t say it was boring,” Shelley hastily
clarified. “I just said it would be nice to read about girls
sometimes, too.”
    “Boys who are coming of age read lots of stuff
about girls,” he said, grinning mischievously.
    “In Playboy ,
right?”
    “You know me too
well, Shelley,” he said with a sigh. His smile became sincere and
he held up his hand to make a pledge: “I promise that I will
read To Kill a
Mockingbird .”
    “Good. And then
you can read The Diary of Anne
Frank , and Little
Women , and—”
    “Hey, why don’t you just write me a
list?”
    “I will,” she said. “Better yet, let’s bike
down to the library tomorrow and I’ll pick out some books for
you.”
    “What a
vacation,” he protested. “I’ll read your books if you’ll
read Guadalcanal Diary . You turn me into a wimp, and I’ll turn you into a
marine.”
    “Yuck,” she said before bursting into
laughter.
    Kip laughed, as well. “You wanna play
backgammon?” he suggested.
    “Okay.”
    He reached up to pull the box down from the
shelf in his closet when the sound of a moped motor rumbled through
the open window. “Uh-oh,” Kip murmured ominously. “The lovebirds
are about to make the scene.”
    Shelley tiptoed to the front window, ducked
down so as not to be visible from the front yard, and looked out.
She saw the moped coasting up the driveway, with Mark steering and
Diana perched behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist. “Maybe
we should go downstairs and turn the porch lights on and off,”
Shelley said.
    Kip shook his head. “They aren’t going to get
in too much trouble. Diana knows I’m here. Whatever they do,
they’re going to have to do it outside.” He knelt beside Shelley
and peered out the window. “I can’t see them anymore—can
you?”
    “The angle isn’t good.”
    “Let’s go upstairs.” Kip helped her to her
feet. Together they hurried out of his room, down the hall to the
small bedroom and up the ladder through the attic to the
cupola.
    From the tiny room atop the roof they had an
unobstructed view of the front yard, the moped, and Diana and Mark,
who were seated on the porch steps, talking. “See?” Shelley said in
Diana’s defense. “Your mother doesn’t have to flash the lights at
them. They know how to behave.”
    “Sometimes.” Kip and Shelley arranged
themselves on their knees, resting their arms on the sill in front
of them and gazing out through the open window. The cupola was
dark, so they didn’t have to worry about being detected from below.
“After you and your mother and the Sussmans left Saturday night, my
father had one of those disgusting little chats with Mark,” Kip
informed her. “You know: ‘What are your intentions, young man?’
That kind of stuff.”
    “Oh, God, how embarrassing! I’d die if my
father did that to a guy I was dating.”
    “That’s the trouble with you, Shelley—you’re
too introverted. You’ve got to learn how to direct your hostility
outward. Diana didn’t threaten to die. She threatened to kill my
father.”
    “What did Mark do?”
    “He had the script memorized: `I like Diana,
we’re good friends.’ The whole thing was really gross.”
    “You were eavesdropping, I take it?”
    “I couldn’t help myself,” Kip said, feigning
innocence. “I was in the kitchen with my mother, cleaning up. They
were in the living room, right across the hall. Besides,” he added
with a grin, “my mom was eavesdropping. Every time I made a noise
she’d shush me and strain to hear what Mark was saying.”
    “Like mother, like son,” Shelley
scolded.
    “Yeah? Well, here you are, spying on
them.”
    Shelley mirrored his smile. “I don’t feel so
guilty. They aren’t doing anything worth spying on.”
    It was true. Diana and Mark sat quietly, Mark’s
arm looped around Shelley’s shoulders, their voices drifting
indistinctly through the night air. They looked nice together,
Shelley thought, suffering an unexpected