A Sense of the Infinite Read Free Page B

go.
    “What is it?” I’d said.
    My father was a boy Mom had known from some of her classes. He was friendly and a flirt, which had made things harder after the canoe trip. People take your side when it’s a stranger with a knife, less so when it’s a handsome boy playing “Blister in the Sun” at a campfire sing-along.
    Mom said she’d always known she wanted to have a kid, and even though it happened in a terrible way, she knew she was going to love me just as much as any other baby. The way Mom told it, the story was smooth and hopeful. She didn’t mention the part about not speaking for eight months, or howshe’d almost given me up for adoption. Maybe she was saving that conversation for when I was an adult.
    “Did he go to jail?” I’d asked.
    Ava had already told me that he hadn’t, but I had to ask things or they’d figure out that I already knew.
    “The laws aren’t very smart,” said Nan. “At the time, some other women in your mom’s situation were running into problems with custody. We didn’t want there to be any chance that he could come along someday and say, I want my kid. ”
    I nodded. In my head, I was imagining a hairy stranger breaking through our front door and dragging me away. Maybe it would have been better if I had been adopted. At least then Mom could have finished college and started her life over, instead of ending up back in her hometown, working at No Frills, while people she’d known all her life treated her like trash.
    Mom and Nan were back to talking about how special I was and how proud of me they were.
    “We’ll go for a hike tomorrow,” said Mom, “and we can talk about it as much as you want.”
    I wondered if Mom was sick of our dusty little forest, and the dusty little life to which I had consigned her. On the trail, the next day, I was too conscious of my arms and legs, my eyes and hands and hair.
    “Are you angry, Annabeth?” Mom had asked. “I didn’twant to tell you when you were too little to understand. But I didn’t want to wait too long either, because you’re growing up fast, and if, God forbid, you ever find yourself in a situation, I want you to have a better chance than I did.”
    I’d never seen her so uncertain. Mom had always seemed invincible to me. She could walk the farthest and carry the heaviest pack. And as horrible as it was to find out that the delinquent-but-redeemable father I’d imagined was actually a demon, to glimpse a crack in Mom’s invincibility was almost as shattering.
    “Why would I be mad at you?” I’d said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
    I imagined Mom getting back into her canoe the morning after it happened. Why hadn’t she told anyone? Why hadn’t she clawed his face off?
    Monster, monster, monster , said the pumping of my heart.
    Monster, monster, monster , until it was as normal as the sound of my own breath.
    My first day at E. O. James, I got lost in the hallways and almost had a panic attack when a senior boy named Louis Vallero startled me in the out-of-the-way stairwell where I was hiding with a book.
    At the barbecue, someone handed me a hot dog and I didn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t see anywhere to throw itout, and I was about to wrap it in a napkin and hide it when a girl I didn’t recognize wrinkled her nose at me.
    “Gross, right?” she’d said. “Welcome to high school, have some murdered pig parts .”
    “I know,” I said, even though I wasn’t even vegetarian at that point, just unhappy and overwhelmed.
    “I’m Noe. What’s your name?”
    I’d hesitated. “Annabeth.”
    Since the summer, it had hurt me to say my own name. I wanted to go live in the forest, with sticks in my hair, like a medieval leper. At least that would be honest; at least that way, I wouldn’t have to pretend to be happy and normal. Nobody expects a medieval leper to make friends.
    Noe didn’t seem to notice my leperhood. “Will you come to the bathroom with me?” she said. “It’s