What They Found by Walter Dean Myers Read Free Book Online

the disappointment.
    She didn’t sleep at all. She thought about Malcolm until the first light of day rose from between the redbrick tenements along Frederick Douglass Boulevard, and thefirst rays of the sun began to glint off the windows along the slowly waking street. Malcolm had had an epiphany a moment of suddenly realizing who he was and what he wanted. Gaylee went into the kitchen and put on water for tea. She needed to have her own moment.
    She didn’t see Elena for nearly the entire day. She had seen Malcolm and he had asked if they could meet after school.
    “Malcolm, I’m a slow thinker,” she had said. “I’m still working on it.”
    “Gaylee, I love you,” he had said.
    She was at her locker when Elena came up to lean against the locker next to hers.
    “I should have kept my big mouth shut, right?”
    “No,” Gaylee said.
    “You talk to Malcolm?”
    “I can’t look at him and say anything,” Gaylee answered. “I know I’ll just show how disappointed I am and end up slobbering all over the place. You ever see how bad I look when I cry?”
    “Gaylee, I’m sorry,” Elena said. “Look, I think he likes you and doesn’t care two cents about no Vanessa.”
    “Could be,” Gaylee said. “But this morning when I got up I realized two things. The first was that I was lonelier than I thought I was and just hadn’t admitted it to myself. The second was that after listening to everything Malcolm said about fulfilling his potential and going onwith his life, I knew he was just talking about what he had decided to do, and what he could do. I’m not brave enough to spit out my two cents to his face, but I know I don’t want to be his choice of the day. Right now I’m not in the mood for long explanations or even short goodbyes, but I know I’m not going to see him again. So I’ll just keep on feeling bad for a while and then I’ll get over it. Look, I’m crying again.”
    “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”
    “Hey, so am I,” Gaylee said.
    At the clinic Dr. Van Pelt asked her if she was all right.
    “You’ve been crying,” the doctor said. “Is there anything I can do?”
    “Not for me,” Gaylee said, trying to force a smile. “I just wondered about that little French bulldog. You going to give him water through his veins?”
    “You think he’s worth it?” Dr. Van Pelt put down the manual she was holding. “We won’t get any thanks for it. We’ll lose money on him and he still might not make it. And with his tiny veins it won’t be easy. But sometimes there just seems to be a right thing to do and you have to do it.”
    Gaylee opened the dog’s cage and saw him raise his head, trying to respond. As she lifted the shivering animal out of his cage, her mind drifted back to Malcolm, as it did a hundred times a day.
    He could have been the answer to a prayer she hadn’tremembered making, the fulfillment of a dream that had been too long in the closet of her mind.
    “Don’t get too attached to that dog,” Dr. Van Pelt said, smiling. “If he makes it we’ll probably end up selling him.”
    “It’s all right,” Gaylee said. “I’ll be able to give him up when the time comes.”

burn
    I ’ve always been quiet. Abeni said I was too quiet and shy for my own good, that I would never find a man if I didn’t learn to “put myself out there.” But I didn’t have my sister’s brilliant smile or that tough, tall body she inherited from our father. What I had was a heart always ready to retreat, eyes too eager to look down when a boy spoke to me, and a tongue that forgot how to speak when anyone expressed interest in me.
    Between working in the shop, going to school, and volunteering at the Children’s Center, I kept myself busy and pretended I wasn’t interested in dating. Abeni told me I needed to come out of my ivory tower and give the boys a chance. What I wanted, what I needed, was for the boys to storm the gates and carry me off. I knew Mama was worried.
    “Don’t you think