Treasure Box by Orson Scott Card Read Free Book Online

Fears. Power used wisely and well, power used to make people safer and freer and happier. But it's power that I love, even though one is supposed to pretend that it isn't. As if anyone would ever come to this benighted town for any other reason."
    "So why don't
you
run for office?" asked Quentin.
    She smiled. "Voters don't take pretty women seriously."
    Quentin almost said, You're not
that
pretty.
    She laughed as if she had heard him. "I'm telegenic. The camera loves me. You should see my driver's license. My yearbook picture. I swear I can't take a bad picture. It's a curse. I'm much less attractive in person."
    Quentin laughed and felt something inside him relax for the first rime in twenty years. Something that he hadn't even known was clenched. "Well darn," he said. "I wish I'd seen your picture before I met you."
    "No, it's better this way. You would have felt too intimidated."
    "Now I've got to see your license, you know."
    She shrugged, opened her little evening purse, and took out the plastic card. He looked at it, angling it to get moonlight on the picture. "Am I correct in thinking that you actually crossed your eyes for your driver's license picture?"
    "I stuck out my tongue the first time but they made me take it over again. They were very angry."
    "This may be the ugliest driver's license photo I've ever seen."
    "Do you think so?" she said. "Have you seen a lot of them, or are you just saying that?"
    "What did you do in your high school yearbook, put your finger in your nose?"
    "I had friends on the yearbook staff. They managed to sneak in a picture of the back of my head. Just my hair in curlers and the back of my neck. They got in
so
much trouble till my parents finally believed me that it was all my idea."
    Her name, according to the license, was Madeleine Cryer.
    "Ms. Cryer," he said, meaning to ask if he could see her again.
    "Call me Madeleine, please."
    "Then you have to call me Quentin."
    "Is that your name?"
    "Yes."
    "But how unbearable. That's a terrible name for someone when you're already going to be stuck with a weird last name. Didn't your parents love you? Didn't you get beaten up in school a lot?"
    "Everybody called me Quen."
    "Quentin. Isn't that a prison?"
    "Somebody actually asked me recently if I was named after the guy who did
Pulp Fiction
. Even though I must be fifteen years older than he is."
    "I have to call you something else. Tin. I have to call you Tin."
    Lizzy's old nickname for him. It hit him so hard that he caught his breath.
    "Don't be mad at me," she said. "I shouldn't have teased about your name."
    "I'm not mad," he said. And then laughed. "Actually,
you're
Mad."
    She got the pun at once and winced. "I guess if I can call you Tin, you can call me Mad." She raised an eyebrow. "I
can
call you Tin?"
    "Only if you'll have dinner with me. Monday?"
    "I was going to fly back home tomorrow."
    "Where's home?" he asked.
    "The old family manse is way up the Hudson. I usually fly to Newark. I've already sent home most of my stuff. Not that I had much. I travel light, I live light."
    "Upriver on the Hudson. I don't know any good restaurants there. So you'll have to pick."
    "Oh, don't be absurd. You wouldn't fly to New York just to have dinner with me."
    "Oh, is that excessive?"
    She studied his face for a moment, perhaps trying to find the irony in his words. "You're really sweet."
    "My homeroom class voted me the most likely to be the guy your mom wishes you were dating."
    "I think you might just be the one my mother would like me to date. My grandmother won't agree, of course, but who cares about her?"
    "Let me meet your grandmother and I promise, I'll win her over."
    She smiled vaguely and looked away. "Maybe I won't go yet."
    "But if you've shipped all your things home..."
    "As I said. I travel light. Where are you taking me to dinner?"
    "I'm new around here. I've been living in Herndon. You tell me."
    "What's your budget? Because you
are
paying, you know."
    "I can eke out at least one