The Year the Lights Came On by Terry Kay Read Free Book Online

what she would do if someone walked in. She pretended to control the unquestionable treason of approaching me, but her hand was quivering and I knew her boldness had weakened.
    “Aw, just throw it,” I said.
    She stopped abruptly and looked straight into my eyes. “No. No. It—might get mashed up.” Her eyes were pale green, her hair as blond as a full moon.
    “Well, it won’t make no difference,” I replied. “Gets mashed up when you eat it.”
    “It was my nickel,” she declared. Then she moved five steps and placed the Three Musketeers in my hand. Her fingernail brushed the length of my thumb and I dropped the candy. She stood frozen, staring at me.
    “Uh—I’m sorry,” I muttered, scooping the candy off the floor.
    Megan was rigid, not breathing.
    “Is it—squashed?” she asked.
    “Uh—naw.”
    “Good.”
    She turned on her heel and swiftly crossed the room. Her body sagged and she breathed deeply.
    “You—you want a bite?” I offered.
    “No,” she said softly. “You—eat—it.”
    I ate the Three Musketeers. It had been touched by Megan’s hands and it was delicious. I folded the wrapper and slipped it into my spelling book. Megan crossed to her desk three rows and four seats over from mine. She began to scribble in her Blue Horse tablet.
    “You ever say ‘thank you’ for anything?” she asked as I swallowed the last bite.
    “Uh—I’m sorry. Thanks.”
    Her back was turned to me. “I bought that with my lunch money,” she blurted.
    I didn’t know what she meant. “Why? Thought you said you didn’t want it.”
    “I didn’t.”
    “Why didn’t you eat lunch?”
    “I wanted the candy. I still got a dime.”
    “That don’t make sense. You didn’t eat lunch and you wanted candy and then you didn’t want to eat it. That don’t make sense.”
    She turned in her desk. She looked furious and suddenly dominating.
    “You don’t understand the first thing about people, do you?” she said curtly. Her voice dismissed me, and it made me angry.
    “I don’t understand crazy people. That’s for sure. That’s for danged sure.”
    “You hang around Freeman Boyd too much. You’re as nasty-mouthed as he is,” she snapped.
    “Freeman’s my friend.”
    “Wesley wouldn’t cuss.”
    “I’m not Wesley.”
    “No, you’re not.”
    “Anyhow, I wasn’t cussin’.”
    “Sounded that way to me.”
    “Dang’s not a cuss word.”
    “It is to some people.”
    “I didn’t ask you to come in here with that da—uh, candy. I didn’t ask you.”
    “I wish I hadn’t.”
    “You don’t have to get snooty about it.”
    She whirled in her desk, ripped the page from her Blue Horse tablet, and wadded it. I slipped out of my seat and started toward the door.
    “Where’re you goin’?” Megan asked, pleading.
    “Out.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you’re no different than Dupree. I thought you was. Well, you’ll see. All of you…”
    “See what?”
    I had said too much and I knew it. “Nothin’.”
    “What?” Megan was questioning, apologizing, asking my anger to be calm.
    “Just—nothin’.”
    “Something’s going on, Colin. I can feel it.”
    She had never before said my name. Not directly. Not when the two of us were alone—but we had never been alone before. The sound of my name was a two-syllable song when Megan said it, a velvet reprise of a mysterious musical nerve, and it made my knees tremble. I returned to my desk as violins wept in reverence over the immortality of a note.
    “I can’t say nothin’,” I told her. “Not now.”
    She did not face me, but I could sense her awful deliberation of what to say, and how to say it, without offending me.
    “You didn’t have to say I was like Dupree,” she finally whispered.
    She was right. She wasn’t like Dupree. No one was like Dupree. Especially Megan.
    “My favorite candy’s a Three Musketeers,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
    “I know it.” Her voice was moist, quaking.
    “How’d you