Memory Boy
Page 14
Sarah spits a fountain-like mouthful of river water. “‘These times,’” she says sarcastically.
Her mother shrugs. “Every generation has something—some issue to deal with, like a war or a depression. Yours will be the volcanoes. Think of the great stories you’ll have to tell your own kids—”
“I thought we were talking about Miles.”
“Okay, yes. Miles gets pretty intense about things,” Nat says. “Especially about our cabin because it belonged to Mr. Kurz—”
“I know all that stuff,” Sarah interrupts.
“But what we didn’t know was how much he and Miles bonded,” her mother continues. “They spent a lot of time together. I think he became a grandfather Miles never had.”
“Or maybe the father he never had?” Sarah asks.
“Don’t be cruel,” her mother says sharply.
Sarah doesn’t reply.
“But in some ways you’re right,” her mother says. “We had our family issues. Maybe this time together is a gift. Try to look at it that way.”
A small dragonfly lands on the bridge of Sarah’s nose—she crosses her eyes and tries to focus on its cellophane wings, its bug eyes; but it’s too close. The dragonfly’s feet tickle her skin as it launches itself back up in the air; she itches her nose. “I hate it here!” she says. “I wish we were back at Birch Bay—our own cabin. That’s where we’re supposed to be living.”
“Let’s not talk about that,” her mother says.
“We’re going to have to someday,” Sarah says.
Her mother does not reply.
“Okay, let’s not,” Sarah says. She takes in a big breath of air and lets herself sink to the bottom of the Mississippi River—which is less dramatic than it sounds. They are only twenty miles from the headwaters at Lake Itasca, and here the Mississippi is only waist deep. It’s narrow enough to leap across in spots. A cold, clear stream with small rocks and tiny shells on the sandy bottom, and the deeper pools where the river bends. Underwater, she opens her eyes. Pretends she’s a fish. Minnows with horizontal stripes and half-transparent bodies flicker by. A silvery shell the size of an ear glints like mother of pearl, and she grabs it. Underwater there’s no sound except for her own heartbeat—and the muffled “Baaack!” of Emily. She sounds far away—where Sarah would like to be.
She stays down a long time, hoping that her mother will think she has drowned. It wouldn’t be the worst way to go, sort of a cool, drifty death with all the dust washed away. She imagines shouting, splashing, hands reaching down to save her.
When she spews air and resurfaces, her mother is halfway back to the cabin. Clutching her shell, she emerges from the river, grabs a towel hung over the side of Miles’s old raft, and dries off. She changes behind a little board screen that she made herself. On the way up the path, she yanks up a handful of thin grass, shakes off the dust, and carries it back to the corral. A nice treat for Emily.
Emily, with her soft, droopy ears, her Roman nose, her wide brown eyes and musky smell that Sarah has come to love. Emily was a “free parting gift” from the squatters occupying the Newell family’s real lake cabin—where her family should be living right now. Birch Bay was their destination when they’d left Minneapolis: a cozy summer cabin near Brainerd that had belonged to her grandparents. The place they always went to on summer weekends. But this time when they got to Birch Bay it was occupied by squatters. A family with kids and a biker and his wife. You folks are gonna have to move on. It’s a dog-eat-dog world nowadays, the creepy biker, big Danny, had said; and since he was a big guy with a big gun, and his wife was related to the local sheriff who would protect them, the Newell family had to move on. It was her family’s most humiliating moment ever—especially for her father.
“But the bad people you came from don’t make you a bad goat!” Sarah says.
“Baaack, baack!” replies Emily.
Sarah snuggles against her, but Emily is fidgety. Nervous. Her eyes keep turning toward the woods. Toward Miles, who is working across the clearing.
“What’s wrong?” Sarah murmurs.
“Baaack, baaack!”
Sarah holds out more grass, which Emily munches on. But she keeps looking around.
“Lend a hand anytime!” Miles calls; he lifts another board onto his sawhorses.
“I’m feeding Emily.”
Miles mutters something she can’t hear.
“Look what I found in the river,” she says. She holds up the shell. The inside curve looks like a pearl; by tilting it she can reflect weak sunlight.
“Clam,” Miles says. “Actually a clam shell. The clam inside got ate by an otter or a mink.”
“‘Eaten,’” she says.
“That’s what I said,” Miles replies, and keeps sawing.
She gives Emily another handful of dusty grass—and when she stands up, she sees a dog watching them from the edge of the woods. A dog the same color as the brush. All grays and browns and tans, like oak leaves. She squints to see him better, but suddenly he’s not there.
It was definitely a dog. An old one, too. A gray muzzle and square head, which is how she noticed him—his large head with its up-slanted eyes. And a tattered part of a collar hanging down—she’s sure about that. Somebody’s lost dog.
She glances again at Miles, who remains intent on his boards. His shotgun leans nearby. She doesn’t say anything about the old dog.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WILL WEAVER is an award-winning fiction writer. His latest novel is THE SURVIVORS, a sequel to his popular young adult novel MEMORY BOY. His other books include FULL SERVICE, DEFECT, SATURDAY NIGHT DIRT, SUPER STOCK ROOKIE, CHECKERED FLAG CHEATER, CLAWS, and the Billy Baggs books STRIKING OUT, FARM TEAM, and HARD BALL, all of which are ALA Best Books for Young Adults. Formerly an English professor at Bemidji State University, he lives in northern Minnesota, a region he writes from and loves. He is an avid outdoorsman and enjoys hunting, fishing, canoeing, and hiking with his family and friends. You can visit him online at willweaverbooks.com.
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OTHER WORKS
ALSO BY WILL WEAVER
The Survivors:
THE SEQUEL TO MEMORY BOY
Claws
Billy Baggs books:
Hard Ball
Farm Team
Striking Out
CREDITS
Cover art © Shane Rebenschied
Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons & Carly Grafstein
COPYRIGHT
The excerpts that appear on pages 22–24 are reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, from Ring of Fire by David Ritchie. Copyright © 1981 by David Ritchie.
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Memory Boy
Copyright © 2001 by Will Weaver
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weaver, Will.
Memory Boy/a novel by Will Weaver.
p. cm.
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Miles and his family must flee their Minneapolis home and begin a new life in the wilderness after a chain of cataclysmic volcanic explosions creates dangerous conditions in the city.
ISBN 978-0-06-201814-4
EPub Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN 9780062241689
1. Wilderness survival—Fiction. 2. Family life—Fiction.] I.
Title.
PZ7.W3623Me 2001
00-32049
[Fic]—dc21
CIP
AC
* * *
11 12 13 14 15 CG/BV 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Revised edition, 2012
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