Read Outside the Lines for Free Online Page B

bank account for college. I didn’t know how to tell her I wasn’t going to college. I didn’t like school very much to begin with.
    “That’s okay, Bug,” my dad told me with a wink when I confessed to him how I felt. “You’re creative, like me. We don’t like being told what to do with our time.” There were even days that he would let me stay home with him after my mother had left for work. He’d call the school and tell them I was sick, asking for my homework assignments so I wouldn’t get too far behind. We cooked together, or took a long walk just to follow a particular cloud in the sky, always sure to get home before my mother did. Dad tried to be careful about not doing this too often, but at my last parent-teacher conference Mom was shocked when Mr. Pitcher told her how many absences I’d had that semester. My parents had a huge fight in the living room when we got home, too angry with each other to bother making me leave the room. I sat quietly, not wanting to make the situation worse by siding with either one of them.
    “She needs to learn, David!” my mother yelled. Her usually pale skin was bright red. “She needs an education!”
    “I’m giving her an education!” Dad bellowed in return. “I’m teaching her about the school of hard knocks. I’m teaching her the names of flowers and how a saffron thread feels as it melts on her tongue!”
    “She won’t get a high school diploma for being well versed in the art of saffron .”
    “I didn’t get a diploma,” my father retorted. “And you married me.”
    “If I recall, that’s a little tidbit from your past you didn’t tell me about until after I married you.” She dropped onto the couch and my father towered over her. His eyes were wild.
    “Oh, so you regret it now?”
    My mother shook her head and sighed in response, but my father continued before she could speak. “Her grades are fine, Lydia. She’s not Einstein, but she’s passing. Who cares if she’s there every day? She’s not going to need to be an expert in American history when she’s running a kitchen.”
    My father understood me. He knew I longed to be a chef. I wanted one of those tall, puffy white hats. And a jacket that had buttons marching up the front like soldiers. As soon as I was fifteen, I was going to get a job waiting on tables and have someone teach me how it all worked.
    But at ten, the fanciest thing I knew how to make was macaroni and cheese from a box, so I got the water boiling and grated about a cup of extra cheese. The powdered stuff just didn’t add enough cheesy flavor, my dad said. He was the one who taught me that using half-and-half instead of the skim milk my mom kept in the refrigerator made all the difference in how creamy my sauce turned out. He was the one who said that as long as I was careful, ten was plenty old enough to learn how to operate the stove.
    “Throw in a dash of garlic powder, too,” he said the first time he let me make the boxed pasta on my own, watching over me through every step. “And salt and pepper.”
    “How much should I put in?” I asked him as I stirred the contents of the pot, careful to hold on to the handle firmly so the pot wouldn’t wobble off the burner.
    “Just a pinch,” he said. “Start small, so you can add more if you have to. Taste everything, every step of the way. You can always add more, but if you put in too much right away, it’ll be ruined.” He tweaked my nose with a playful pinch. “Remember the artist’s rule: less is more.”
    I smiled at him. “Less is more,” I repeated solemnly. I trusted him, even though part of me wasn’t sure if that was such a good idea anymore. My mother had cried that morning after he left. She went up to her room and shut the door. I knew better than to follow her. Instead, I did my best to clean up the kitchen from her pancake mess, wrapping the cooked ones in plastic and putting them in the freezer to throw in the toaster another morning.
    I took