 |
RosettaBooks are available in a number of eBook Formats |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
The World of Henry Orient
 About the Book
About The Movie
|
|
|
|
Preview
Chapter 1
It was very cold that morning in October. The sun had risen, but was only a faint orange blur through the gray fog, and the water of the East River was full of chilly silver glints. I had come early, to avoid the school bus. I indulged myself in this way once a week, to give myself a few moments longer in the comforting society of strangers, and to be able to stand and stare at the insane asylums on Welfare Island before going into the dreaded school building.
It wasn´t that there was anything really wrong with the Norton School. It was more that I didn´t like myself when I was in it, and I suffered through each day like a prisoner filling out a jail sentence. When school was out, I would take the school bus halfway home, get out and go to a certain drugstore for a butterscotch sundae, then go home on the gay and wicked public bus. The sundae marked my independence for the day, and I usually sat over it and dreamed of myself in wild and heroic situations. I didn´t read much, as I had outgrown comic books and was not interested in my school subjects, and it hadn´t occurred to me that there might be something in between. The rest of the girls at Norton bewildered and frightened me. They were shrill-voiced, athletic and sophisticated, and they talked as though they were forty-year-old demimondaines whose every week end was spent in pursuit of a new and exhausting love affair. I believed all they said, was duly terrified, and went my own way: eating sundaes, staring at the insane asylums, and imagining myself having escapades that would scandalize all the other girls in the eighth grade.
I had a particular place where I sat, behind a corner of the building, where the railing curved out slightly and allowed me a private corner, all to myself. Just above was the cement pier, and I could hear the shrieks of the girls who came early to play prison ball. This was a malicious game whose only apparent object was to abuse the opponents by hitting them as hard as possible in the stomach with a heavy rubber ball. It sounded vaguely unreal, like something on another planet; and to distract myself I pulled a history book out of my schoolbag and began to read about the Assyrians. I read furiously for two pages, then, finding Sargon as dull as ever, closed the book. As I did so, I heard a slight scuffle just outside my hiding place. I looked up, and saw a strange girl standing in the entrance.
She was rather tall, with scruffy dark red hair and an elfin face, like some sort of wood nymph in the wrong wood. She was dressed exactly as I was (and as all Norton girls) in a dark green gym tunic and a white starched Wright and Ditson blouse, ironed into unrelenting squareness. Over this she wore a fitted, fur-trimmed coat, much too old for her and flying wildly open at the front. In her arms she held a large and hectic pile of notebooks, mittens, stray pieces of paper, a pair of dirty sneakers, a tennis ball, and balanced precariously on top, a thick folder with MUSIC inked in large and ornate letters across the front. As she stood there, the pile began to wobble dangerously. She grabbed at the top, but everything slipped, and before either of us could do anything the whole collection was flying through the air. The music folder opened and one piece of music hit the railing and balanced on top for a moment. She snatched at it, but it went over into the river.
"It was the exercise book," she said. "Mr. Drago will say I did it on purpose." She giggled wildly, then sat down on the ground and began to stuff everything, even the sneakers, back into the notebooks. The more she stuffed, the more disorder she seemed to make, and the more stray objects seemed to appear. Finally she sat back on her heels and glanced at me as though seeing me for the first time, which of course wasn´t so, and said:
"Sorry."
I had been staring at her as though she were a strange animal in a zoo. "What for?" I asked, in an astonished voice.
"For interrupting you - in whatever you´re doing," she said.
"I´m not doing anything," I said.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kindle
Sony Reader
Palm Digital
MS Reader
Adobe Reader
Mobipocket