Shining On by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online Page A

to grow up and marry and have a couple of kids, and not be different in any way. Not be-cause the only thing he cares about is my being “normal,” but more because he's quite sure that being different— especially this way—is going to make absolutely everything in my life a whole lot more difficult for me. Once he's con-vinced this is the only way I'm going to be, he'll get a grip. I'm sure he'll want me happy more than he'll want me straight. I'm lucky there. Some people want you straight a whole lot more than they want you happy.
    The bus ride home was pretty quiet (if you don't count Mum saying, “Gregory, have you got all the bags?” two dozen times). Once or twice, she touched my hand, as if she were about to say something. But it was not till we were walking into our own street that she came out with it.
    “Let's not say anything about all this just for the moment.”
    I gave her a suspicious look. What was she thinking? I wasn't old enough to know my mind? That this was some-thing I was trying on, like some new style, or haircut? Did she think I was temporarily unhinged? Under someone's spell? Totally mistaken?
    “Just for the moment,” she repeated. “Just till we're sure.”
    No point in climbing out of a box if you're going to climb straight back in again. “I am sure, Mum. I've been sure for years now.”
    “Well, waiting a little longer before you tell your father won't hurt, then, will it?”
    “Mum,” I said, “give me one good reason not to tell him now.”
    She looked quite hunted. “You know how upset he's going to be, and we can't have him saying anything in front of Granny and Grandpa.”
    Whoa, there! I stopped in my tracks. “And why not?”
    She stopped as well. “Gregory, you know perfectly well why not.”
    I put down the shopping, all six bags of it. “Mum, you can't pick and choose who I keep this secret from,” I told her. “It's too important. That has to be
my
decision.”
    “But what if your grandpa finds out?”
    “It's not a matter of him ‘finding out,’” I said. “Some-body has to tell him. Otherwise I'll be back exactly where I was before, having to watch myself all the time.”
    “Is that so terrible?”
    “Yes, it is!” I snapped. “And it won't stop there, either. Within a week or so, you and Dad will be trying to kid yourselves it was all just a horrible mistake. No, I'm sorry, Mum. I'm not going back and it isn't fair to ask me.”
    “Fair?” she snapped, striding off down the street again.
“Fair?
And what about what's fair on the rest of us? You'll give your grandpa a heart attack!”
    I'd got her there. “Oh, I don't think so,” I said, picking up everything and trailing after her. “Didn't he go ballistic when you told him that Ginny was pregnant by Wayne Poster? And Gran cried for
weeks.
They were so upset andfurious, they didn't even go to the wedding. And now look at them! Gran spends her whole life tangled up in pink knitting wool, and Grandpa won't put the baby down. They're tough. They'll get over it.”
    Mum strode on furiously. “Don't kid yourself they're going to come to terms with this quite so easily!”
    “I don't see why not,” I said sullenly. “They've got used to my terrible hair. And my terrible clothes. And my terrible music. And my terrible friends. And my—”
    “Gregory! This is a whole lot more important than any of those!”
    “Yes!” I yelled back. “It certainly is! And that's exactly why I can't go on pretending all the time—not at school, and on the team, and with girls, and at home, and at my Saturday jobs, and
everywhere.
There's got to be
somewhere
I can just be me.”
    Perhaps I'd got through to her. Or perhaps it was be-cause we'd practically reached our own gate. But, suddenly, she seemed to soften a little. “But surely waiting a little is only sensible. What if you change your mind?”
    If this had been school debate, I'd have come back at her pretty sharpish on that one, saying something like