Lost Between Houses Read Free Page A

exact way.
    “Oh yeah,
that’s
what he’s like,” I thought to myself. “For a second there, I thought I actually missed him.”
    A few minutes later my mother fluttered out, all anxious and smiley and trying to make everything all right.
    “He’s not feeling well,” she said. I snorted. I shouldn’t have but I did. It was partly to punish her for not taking my side, for not getting it. I went right in.
    My father was lying in bed in blue pyjamas. His face was grey, his hands folded across his chest like a stiff. Naturally he said nothing about kicking me out a moment earlier. ‘Sorry’ would have done the trick, I would have melted with surprise; I would have melted with gratitude, too, because it would have freed me from feeling like I had a belt around my chest.
    He asked me about school, about a test I’d knocked out of the park the week before, math no less.
    “There was this isosceles triangle problem but there was a mistake in it. Like in the typing. So instead of solving it, I proved that you
couldn’t
solve it.”
    “Uh-huh,” he said. “That’s good. That’s very good.”
    He wasn’t listening to a fucking word I said, a dummy could see that, and I got instantly pissed off at myself for letting him play me like a sucker again, me coming up there thinking he’d be glad to see me and all. But no, he was just putting up with me, as usual.
    “It’s been nice to see you,” I said.
    We shook hands. I went back out into the hall. My mother was out there, smoking a cigarette.
    “How’d it go?” she asked.
    I laughed.
    “Don’t be like that,” she snapped. “It’s so unattractive.”
    I waited a couple of beats. I could feel my face distorting. Like the muscles were moving it as if they had a mind of their own.
    “Yeah, well don’t feel compelled to bring me next time,” I said.
    I called up a whole mess of people that night. Part of me was ready for them to say, “A party? At your place? Now why the
fuck
would I go to a party at your place?” But it didn’t go like that, not at all. My mother was right. People like being invited places, even by an asshole, not that I was one, but if they’ve got a choice, they’d rather not go than not be invited. It sort of gained momentum, this ringing people up, and by the end I was really speedy, like it was a race or something. I had so much juice I even called up a few people I hadn’t intended to invite. What the hell, I thought, it’s a party, but really it was just an excuse to
keep at it.
I kept making the same joke over and over, like it just occurred to me.
    “Hi Leonard,” I’d say, “not that I expect anybody to come, but I’m having a little party,” and then I’d laugh like I’d never said it before. Which was fine until I accidentally called him back.
    “You already said that,” he said.
    Most guys would have let it go but not Leonard. He was a little bit
exact
for my comfort.
    I saved the girls for the end. I called up Susan Fairley first, she had a fierce crush on me, a one-way crush I might add, but I knew she’d come. I called Adrienne Mustard, the doctor’sdaughter, and told her to bring Mary-Anne Parker. Then the Bishop Strachan girls, Jane Martin and Rodent and Jamie Porter, who would let you do a lot if you could just get her alone. And that went so well, I started to call the tougher cases, those pretty Catholic girls, Pamela Mathews and Anna Christie and Cynthia Macdonald, who was so beautiful she scared me. Somebody asked me if they should tell Daphne Gunn and I said sure, why not.
    On the night of the party, Friday, I came home right after school. My mother had done everything, natch. She was whirling around the house like it was
her
party.
    “I’ve got the potato chips, pretzels, Coke, orange pop, dip, I know you don’t like it but some kids do.”
    “What are the green things?” I asked.
    “Don’t be negative. They’re pickles. You don’t have to eat them.”
    “I can smell them from