Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link Read Free Book Online

hopeless
look this was.
    Carroll dropped his own eyes, ashamed of himself and not quite
sure why. He took a deep breath. "What I meant to say, Rachel, is I
love you very much and would you please marry me?"
    Rachel pulled her hand away from him. She said in a low angry
voice, "What do you think this is, Carroll? Do you think this is a
book? Is this supposed to be the happy ending—we get married and
live happily ever after?"
    She got up, and he stood up too. He opened his mouth, and
nothing came out, so he just followed her as she walked away. She
stopped so abruptly that he almost fell against her. "Let me ask
you a question first," she said, and turned to face him. "What
would you choose, love or water?"
    The question was so ridiculous that he found he was able to
speak again. "What kind of a question is that?" he said.
    "Never mind. I think you better take me home in your car,"
Rachel said. "It's starting to snow."
    Carroll thought about it during the car ride. He came to the
conclusion that it was a silly question, and that if he didn't
answer it correctly, Rachel wasn't going to marry him. He wasn't
entirely sure that he wanted to give the correct answer, even if he
knew what it was.
    He said, "I love you, Rachel." He swallowed and he could hear
the snow coming down, soft as feathers on the roof and windshield
of the car. In the two beams of the headlights the road was dense
and white as an iced cake, and in the reflected snow-light Rachel's
face was a beautiful greenish color. "Will you marry me anyway? I
don't know how you want me to choose."
    "No."
    "Why not?" They had reached the farm; he turned the car into
driveway, and stopped.
    "You've had a pretty good life so far, haven't you?" she
said.
    "Not too bad," he said sullenly.
    "When you walk down the street," Rachel said, "do you ever find
pennies?"
    "Yes," he said.
    "Are they heads or tails?"
    "Heads, usually," he said.
    "Do you get good grades?"
    "As and Bs," he said.
    "Do you have to study hard? Have you ever broken a mirror? When
you lose things," she said, "do you find them again?"
    "What is this, an interview?"
    Rachel looked at him. It was hard to read her expression, but
she sounded resigned. "Have you ever even broken a bone? Do you
ever have to stop for red lights?"
    "Okay, okay," he snapped. "My life is pretty easy. I've gotten
everything I ever wanted for Christmas, too. And I want you to
marry me, so of course you're going to say yes."
    He reached out, put his arms around her. She sat brittle and
stiff in the circle of his embrace, her face turned into his
jacket. "Rachel—"
    "My mother says I shouldn't marry you," she said. "She says I
don't really know you, that you're feckless, that you've never lost
anything that you cared about, that you're the wrong sort to be
marrying into a family like ours."
    "Is your mother some kind of oracle, because she has a wooden
leg?"
    "My mother knows about losing things," Rachel said, pushing at
him. "She says it'll hurt, but I'll get over you."
    "So tell me, how hard has your life been?" Carroll said. "You've
got your nose, and both your legs. What do you know about losing
things?"
    "I haven't told you everything," Rachel said and slipped out of
the car. "You don't know everything about me." Then she slammed the
car door. He watched her cross the driveway and go up the hill into
the snow.
    Carroll called in sick all the next week. The heating unit in
his apartment wasn't working, and the cold made him sluggish. He
thought about going in to the library, just to be warm, but instead
he spent most of his time under the quilt that Mrs. Rook had made,
hoping to dream about Rachel. He dreamed instead about being
devoured by dogs, about drowning in icy black water.
    He lay in his dark room, under the weight of the scarlet quilt,
when he wasn't asleep, and held long conversations in his head with
Rachel, about love and water. He told her stories about his
childhood; she almost seemed to be listening. He asked her about
the