Read Catching Air for Free Online Page A

alongside a carton of milk, a box of cornflakes, iceberg lettuce, eggs, chicken breasts, and bananas. The treat stood out like an emerald glittering atop a pile of dirt. Kira could almost taste the smooth chocolate icing on her tongue, and savor the sensation of licking the creamy filling.
    But then the cashier with the seen-it-all-before gaze had handed back the credit card and said, “It was denied.” It had happened to them dozens of times before. This time, though, a woman had stepped forward. She had long gray hair, although her face was young, and she wore clogs and a flowery dress. Even all these years later, Kira still remembered the pattern of those soft blue flowers.
    “May I?” the woman had asked, holding out her own charge card. “I’ve had the same thing happen myself. Sometimes those silly machines just don’t work.”
    Kira had looked at the woman’s kind face, then at the cupcakes, so close she could touch them. She wouldn’t even wait until she got home to eat them with a glass of milk. She’d rip apart the cellophane and devour them in the car and lick every sticky crumb off her fingertips.
    “You’re too kind, but my husband must have just forgotten to pay the bill,” Kira’s mother had said, forcing out a small laugh. Kira could still remember how her mother’s lipstick had seeped into the vertical lines above her mouth, and how she couldn’t tell if her mother was angry or just embarrassed.
    “We can send her the money,” Kira had said, looking at the woman with gray hair, who was nodding encouragingly.
    “Don’t be silly,” Kira’s mother had responded, grabbing Kira’s upper arm and squeezing hard.
    They’d left the cupcakes behind and driven home silently, and Kira had eaten another peanut butter sandwich for dinner, choking down bite after miserable bite. She was furious; she had enough money in her piggy bank to repay the woman! Why hadn’t her mother let her? Later that night, her mother had come into her room and rested a hand on Kira’s shoulder. Kira had pretended to be asleep, but her mother had spoken anyway.
    “Two cupcakes aren’t worth our pride, honey,” she’d said. “We’ll buy some next time with our own money.”
    Her mother had remembered, too: A few weeks later, there was a cellophane package on Kira’s pillow when she came home from school. Kira had sat on the edge of her bed, remembering the knowing eyes of the cashier and the sympathetic ones of the gray-haired lady, feeling the hard pinch of her mother’s fingers against her upper arm. The frosting and creamy filling and cake had turned into a paste in her mouth and she’d had trouble swallowing it.
    Maybe, in an odd, circular sort of way, her father was the reason why she’d been put on probation at the law firm, since the idea of taking anything rankled her, too. Or maybe there was more of her mother in her than she cared to admit: After all, in the first grade she’d seen a classmate with a rainbow-colored eraser that she knew belonged to another girl, and she’d raised her hand and announced it to the teacher in front of everyone, ignoring the whispers of “Tattletale!” Brutal honesty was probably woven into her DNA, a genetic gift from her mother, along with a faster than normal resting pulse and the inability to relax.
    “Are you still awake?” Peter was leaning up on one elbow, staring at her.
    She started. “It’s just so hot.”
    “It’ll be cooler in Vermont,” he said.
    “Maybe we should get onto I-95 at the next chance,” she said. “We could be there in two days if we don’t take a lot of breaks. This was a dumb idea.”
    Peter studied her for a minute, then reached for his door and opened it.
    “What are you doing?” she asked. Instead of answering he walked around to her side of the car, opened her door, and reached for her hand.
    She followed him to a patch of grass, where he lay down.
    “It’s better out here,” he said.
    “But the bugs,” she