Read Ask Again, Yes for Free Online Page A

into his room at dawn to look for something on his bookshelves. She’d been worked up about something through breakfast. He knew better than to ask. But then, several hours later, when everyone in class bent over their papers to copy what Mrs. Duvin was writing on the board, he drew a line between that morning and the last time he’d seen the model ship she’d given him after dinner the week before. It wasn’t his birthday yet. Christmas had just passed. It was as seaworthy as any real ship, his mother had said proudly, an exact replica in miniature of Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind, every mast and sail as it was on that great ship, everything historically accurate down to the long beak, the pintle and gudgeon rudders. His mother ignored his father when he asked howmuch it cost. His father looked at the box it had arrived in, examined the postage marks, looked for a packing slip. It was heavy, solid. Not a toy, exactly, but what?
    “You know that model ship I showed you the other day?” Peter asked. “Do you remember if we left it outside?”
    “No,” Kate said. “Why? Can’t find it?”
    “No. And I think my mom was looking for it this morning.”
    Kate dropped down to sit on her heels. “We had it by the rocks. Oh, but then we floated it. Was that the same day?” There was a pile of snow that had melted in the sun, and they’d placed the gleaming wood boat in the narrow stream that flowed from the top of Kate’s driveway to the street.
    “I think I had it after that.”
    Kate turned, her wide hazel eyes looking at him steadily. It was like watching choppy water go smooth as glass. There was a time—kindergarten or first grade—when one of them might have idly taken the other’s hand to crack the knuckles, to measure the breadth and length of their fingers against each other, to lock fists and declare a thumb war, and even then he could feel something in her settle, go still, when he had her full attention. But they’d gotten too old for thumb wars. She brushed her hair from her face and tucked it behind her ears. The others were calling her from the back of the bus. “Will you get in trouble?”
    “No, it’s fine,” Peter said. He had a scab on his knuckle and he pried up the edge with his fingernail.
    “But we’d better find it,” she said.
    Peter shrugged. “Yeah.”
    Over the years, whenever the subject of Peter’s parents came up, Kate studied him and was uncharacteristically quiet. Only once, when they were sitting out by the rocks—Kate wearing black wool tights on her head so she could pretend the legs were two long ponytails that reached her waist—had she hinted that she noticed anything was different about his mom, compared to other moms. That day, they’d looked upin unison as his mother drove up the street. They watched her park her car, hurry into the house without looking left or right or saying hello to anyone. Kate’s mother was outside pulling weeds. Mr. Maldonado was painting their mailbox post. Two houses down Mr. O’Hara was digging a hole to plant a sapling and had invited the kids on the block to help fill it in when he’d gotten the tree in place.
    “Why is your mother like that?” Kate asked that day. The yards were small, shaded by heavy trees. Peter knew by the cracks of light between the branches and the rising chorus of cicadas that it would soon be time for all the kids to go inside. He had been hoping Mr. O’Hara would call for their help before his mother came home.
    “Why is my mother like what?” Peter answered after a moment. They were in second grade, had just made First Holy Communion. Peter opened his hands as if in prayer, leaned over the tall grass between the two largest boulders—impossible to reach with a lawn mower no matter how hard Mr. Gleeson cursed and rammed his up against the crevice—and bringing his palms together he caught a grasshopper. He held the wings together with his thumbs so Kate could look at it more closely, and when