3
Peter
Christie began coming by the store every afternoon after school and even on Saturdays. At first, she pretended to be running errands for her mother, but she soon admitted she just wanted to see Peter. They went for walks, rode bikes, went for drives, and even to the movies. Sometimes they played tag and hide and seek in the park with the little children.
Peter had never been so happy. Christie was teaching him what it was like to have a friend. He realized the people he thought had been his friends weren’t friends at all, just people his uncle knew. Real friends were people you did things with, people who cared, people you could actually talk to or didn’t have to talk to. Maybe that was the problem. He couldn’t talk. He had no way of telling her how he felt. All the words were piling up trapped inside his head with no way of getting out. Sometimes he felt like his head was going to explode.
4
Christie
Christie took Peter’s hand and pulled him through the open front door of the store. “Bet you can’t guess what we’re going to do today,” she giggled.
Peter smiled, shaking his head.
“I’m going to teach you to read. I talked to Miss Baker, my English teacher, and she told me just how to go about it.”
When they were in the car, she reached between the seats and handed Peter two books. “The Apricot ABC Book and Dick and Jane. When you learn these, we’ll go on to some neat stuff like The Hardy Boys and Lassie. I know that’s funky old stuff, but they are easy to start with. Aren’t you just so excited? I know I am. I can’t wait until you can read books like Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island and H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. The world is just full of good books, Peter. I know you’ll just want to read everything.”
Peter opened the Apricot book. There was a drawing of two yellow bees. Underneath them were two lines of print. Bee, he read to himself. The bee bu . . . buzzed . . . bus . . . busily. He looked up at Christie and grinned proudly. She smiled back. She had no idea what was going on inside Peter’s head.
Christie started the car and drove out of town toward her parents’ farm. Big white fluffy clouds piled high in the September sky looked like so much freshly picked cotton. The September wind was moist, already a damp chill of autumn to it.
“I found this neat spot near my parent’s farm,” she shouted above the wind noise. “I packed us some sodas and sandwiches. We can make a day of it.”
Peter was watching her. She looked at him and smiled. Their eyes met and it was as if they were talking without any actual words being said.
Just past her parents’ large white two-story farmhouse and huge red barn, Christie turned right onto a narrow dirt road that ran along the split rail fence. She stopped the car near a shallow creek that tumbled through the meadow behind the barn.
