Read Come Sit By Me for Free Online Page B

Dents. Pockmarks. Whatever they were, I was sure that Cale had made them. Was it frustration he was feeling when he did that? Must have been.
    School got underway, and I fell into the routine. World lit from Ms. Hayward to start off the day. If you just kept up with the assigned reading, you were O.K. The classes always started with a lecture from her on the current topic; then she would ask Terry for comments. Nobody else mattered to Ms. Hayward, and Terry assured me I would get a B if I did the work. I decided to try for an A, but wasn’t quite sure how to go about it.
    Mr. Barnes still taught social studies, and it was clear why he had sent some of his students to the library to work on projects. A full classroom was too much for him to handle. People chatted and texted each other while Mr. Barnes was explaining fascinating topics like the effects of the Glass-Steagall Act. He assigned people to projects, which just meant they gathered in groups to listen to music on their cell phones. The only way Mr. Barnes could have gotten anything done was to get rid of the most disruptive kids. However, this year Dr. Haynes had obviously told him to keep everybody in the same room. No trips to the library.
    The math teacher, a guy with thinning white hair named Mr. Gregorio, looked like he had learned math from Archimedes. He wrote numbers on the chalkboard very, very slowly, but they were the neatest-looking numbers I ever saw anybody write. I was in advanced math, which was pre-calculus, and the only problem I had trouble with was stopping myself from telling him to hurry up.
    And so it went. About one in every four students in the school was hoping to go to college. The rest would either join the military or risk being stuck in Hamilton their whole lives. Terry and I, and North and Junior, were among those who intended to go on.
    The first couple of weeks, I had to ride on the school bus with my sister and the other young kids until my dad finally agreed to buy me a car. It wasn’t much—a six-year-old Toyota. I had wanted a pickup truck, since about half the seniors drove one, but Dad said we hadn’t come to Hamilton to become farmers. And I had to agree to take Susan to school and bring her home. I pointed out that I needed to stay after to work on the newspaper so I would have an extracurricular activity on my record. Susan piped up that she could do her homework in the library while I worked on the paper.
    As it happened, that turned out well, because Susan made friends with Ms. Clement, the librarian. Susan’s really a great suck-up, and teachers always love her. Anyway, she volunteered to help out and started by shelving books and so on. She did that after school until I had finished with the newspaper.
    One day, driving to school, I brought up the subject I had in mind. “Do you know if the library keeps records of books that students have taken out?”
    â€œSure,” she said. “If they’re still out.”
    â€œHow about if they were returned?”
    â€œI guess. For this year, anyway.”
    â€œAnd how about…in other years?”
    â€œWhat do you mean, other years? This is our first year.”
    â€œWell, if I wanted to know, say, what kinds of books Cale Peters had checked out. Would it be possible?”
    She shrugged. “Everything’s on a computer. I don’t know if anybody bothers to erase the data from previous years.”
    â€œCould you, maybe, find out?”
    Well, Susan isn’t dumb. She caught on. “Why do you want to know that?” she asked.
    I tried the official answer: “I’m writing an article for the school newspaper.”
    â€œYou already wrote a memorial article.”
    â€œCale wasn’t in it.”
    â€œOf course. Nobody wants to remember him. And they’re not going to print anything you write about him, either.”
    I decided to give the truth a try. You never know. “Well, actually, I didn’t