The Great Good Thing by Andrew Klavan Read Free Book Online

but one on Old Colony Lane. It was a hill on which the houses got smaller and smaller as you came down. There were porticoed white mansions perched up at the top. Then, mid-slope, there were fine, stately homes. By the time you got down to the bottom where we were, the living was relatively modest. Our own house grew larger over time as my father prospered and added rooms and bought the neighbor’s backyard to add to ours. But at the start, it was just a smallish colonial, white clapboards and green shutters, with a narrow front lawn.
    It was only a minute’s walk from my front door to the end of the road. From there you could either turn right onto the wide, bright, open path of Chadwick Road, or go straight ahead. Ahead lay the junction of Andover and Plymouth. It was a strangely dark corner. An empty house hunkered in mossy shadows under a dense cluster of oaks and pines. We made a haunted mansion out of it, of course. My big brother and his friends hung hangmen’s nooses from the tree branches to frighten us. They cut out cardboard hands and streaked them with blood-red marker and stuck them in the earth so it looked as if dead men were digging out of their graves. 1
    But while going by the ghost house did send a chill through me, I opted for that route most often. There were fewer kids along the way. If I left home five minutes early, I could avoid running into my pal from up the block. Then I could walk to school alone, and I could dream uninterrupted.
    Books tucked under my arm, I ambled along the morning streets imagining stories, lost in stories. It was not an empty state of mind. It was a positive pleasure, like going to the movies or watching TV. I looked forward to it. I enjoyed it. I still remember the melancholy that would come over me as the little gray schoolhouse came into sight and the end of the walk drew near. I was sorry that my best time for dreaming was almost over.
    Not that school put an end to my dreaming. No, no, I dreamed all through it. I was a terrible student. I managed to get top grades in every subject except handwriting (mine was then, as it is now, illegible), but it was all fraud. I could read well and write well and talk glibly and even figure out math problems in my head. So I could bluff my way through subjects I knew nothing about, and neither my teachers nor my parents, nor even my friends, were aware that I was hardly doing any schoolwork at all. I would come home every afternoon and dump my books on the table in the front hall. I would tell my mother I had finished my homework at lunchtime or in study period. Then, after a snack of cookies and milk, I would rush out of the house again, jump on my bike, and pedal off in search of other kids to play with. I learned nothing. I knew nothing: no historical facts, no mathematical formulas, no passages from the books we were supposed to have read.
    As a result, my time in the classroom was divided between boredom and terror. I would sit dazed in a fog of immovable minutes and hours. With some lesson or other droning on in the background, I would doodle jets and monsters in my notebook. I’d imagine Russian soldiers kicking in the door and how I’d fight my way through rifle fire to rescue the fascinatingly pale girl who sat in the front row where she was forever eagerly raising her hand. Then, every now and again, the fog would suddenly be split by a blue-electric flash of fear. The teacher had asked a question! Now she was scanning the children’s faces, face by face, searching for someone to call on. It was an easy question too. Anyone who had even glanced at the reading would know the answer. But I had not, and I did not.
    The suspense was agony. The fear of public humiliation—dreadful: the fear that my charade would be undone, my ignorance exposed for all the world to see. All my dreams of epic heroism would evaporate on the instant and I would be forced to stutter and sweat through some mealy-mouthed excuse that everyone would