Circles Read Free

and arguments. She still treated him as if he were twelve years old like Marcy, and not sixteen and a half. She didn’t like him driving at all, and kept showing him all the latest figures on teenage deaths on the highway. He smiled grimly, remembering how she had refused at first even to sign the permission form for him to get a permit. Now he could smile, but then, when he was fifteen and a half, he hadn’t smiled. He had simply decided that maybe he would be happier living with his father.
    He put the van in reverse, and backed up a few inches. That woman who had parked in front of him hadn’t left him much room. He tapped her bumper on his first attempt to pull out. Nothing serious but the car shuddered. It was only a little subcompact. He backed up again, and then pulled out easily.
    His father had always said he could come and stay with him anytime he wanted. Ever since the divorce seven years ago his father kept repeating that he would be welcome anytime he was ready to make the move.
    Mark stopped for a light, opened his window, and leaned one elbow on it. Of course, when Mark first suggested it his mother had said no way! She said his father was irresponsible, undependable, selfish, and didn’t mean what he said anyway. “That man never changed a diaper or fed a bottle to a baby in his life,” she kept saying, Well, Mark didn’t need a diaper changed anymore, and he didn’t drink out of bottles either, but it had taken over a year before she had finally agreed. “You’ll be back,” she told him. He knew he would not.
    His father’s apartment—his now, too—was only a mile or so from the library, and he didn’t want to stop driving. So he passed the street where they lived, and headed out towards the ocean. His father wouldn’t mind if he stayed out a little longer. His mother, on the other hand, would start fussing if he was fifteen minutes late.
    He turned onto the Great Highway, and increased his speed. It was cool, and the ocean breezes rippled across his head. A new life for him, that’s what it was. A new life in a big, magic city. He’d felt confined out in San Leandro. It was foggy up ahead, and he frowned. Fog. That was the only part of living in San Francisco he wasn’t going to like. There was too much fog. The last few nights had been so foggy that he hadn’t been able to see much through his telescope.
    But his father had insisted that the winter skies were usually clear. Mark also knew that there was an amateur astronomer’s group here in the city that held monthly meetings and had star parties up at Mount Tarn. He would get in touch with them in the next day or so. Back in San Leandro, aside from Mr. Benson at school, he hadn’t found anybody who was really interested in astronomy.
    At Sloat Boulevard, Mark reluctantly turned and began heading back to his father’s—no—back home. It was his home now. Sure, some things seemed a little strange, but he would get used to them. His room was tiny, hardly more than a closet, and the place was pretty sloppy, and—this was kind of embarrassing but he was sixteen and a half—he knew he was interfering with his father’s love life.
    He stopped at a stop sign, and two women hesitantly swayed on the curb, watching him. Magnanimously, he motioned for them to cross, and they smiled and nodded at him as they passed. He smiled back, and kept smiling once he started driving again. His father would probably let him drive almost any time he wanted. Probably even on the Sundays when he visited his mother out in San Leandro, he guessed his father would simply toss him the keys and let him take the van. Wouldn’t she be surprised when he pulled up in it? She’d probably say his father was just being irresponsible to let him drive it. Well, it didn’t really matter what she said anymore. All he’d have to say was that it was okay with Dad.
    This Saturday he would start working in his father’s hardware store, and he would continue to work there