Read Say What You Will for Free Online Page B

talk about over lunch, and was grateful for the list of Amy’s interests Nicole gave them during their training session. “Amy needs to find people she has things in common with,” Nicole had said. “To help with that, I’ve come up with a list of Amy’s favorite things.” She passed them out:
    Impressionist art
    Korean food
    Diary of Anne Frank
    Simon and Garfunkel
    Movies from the forties, especially Bette Davis
    The list went on, but even Matthew could see the problem with Nicole’s thinking. High-school students don’t sit around and talk about the diary of Anne Frank. No one broke open their lunch bags, saying, “Who here loves Bette Davis?” Teenagers didn’t talk about subjects . Teenagers made fun of one another or, failing that, made fun of their teachers.
    Now, at lunch with Amy, Matthew mentioned the hobby/interest list. He assumed she knew about it, but apparently not. Amy squawked in either a laugh or a gasp of horror. “OH MY GOD. WHAT WAS ON IT?”
    He told her the items that he could remember.
    “ ANNE FRANK? ARE YOU SERIOUS?”
    “I thought maybe that sounded a little funny. Not that Anne Frank wasn’t a great writer.”
    “I WAS TEN WHEN I READ THAT!”
    “Really?” For Matthew it was assigned two years ago. He liked the book, but it took him a long time to read and was harder than he expected. “Were you really ten? That seems young. Were you a reading prodigy or something?”
    “NO. I USED TO READ A LOT. NOT MUCH ELSE TO DO.”
    She told him she didn’t understand why her mother listed that book when there were so many others she’d read and loved more recently. It was like Nicole wanted people to be impressed with her fifth-grade accomplishment. “IS THAT WEIRD? IMPRESSING PEOPLE WITH HOW SMART I USED TO BE?”
    “I don’t know.” Matthew shrugged. For the first time, he tried to imagine his own mother as involved in his life as Amy’s was. Since that faucet discussion a few weeks ago, she hadn’t asked him many questions. She hadn’t even asked what he was doing about college applications, which seemed strange since that was the only thing his classmates talked about these days. “It sounds like you were pretty smart.”
    “I STILL AM! WHAT ABOUT THE BOOKS I’M READING NOW?”
    He couldn’t tell if she was really upset or joking. Her head moved side to side and her hand pushed her Pathway to the edge of the table. “Okay.” Matthew smiled and pushed the computer back near her hand. “What books are you reading now?”
    “I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.”
    She was upset. She pushed her computer away again and stopped sipping from her can of Boost. He was pretty sure Amy was mad at her mother, not him, but still he wasn’t sure how to get her out of this mood. “I used to read a lot, but I don’t anymore,” he said. “It makes me too anxious.”
    The expression on Amy’s face changed. “WHY?”
    Now that he’d said it, he realized he shouldn’t have. However he explained himself, it wouldn’t sound right. She waited. He had to say something: “I get worried about reading things the wrong way. Sometimes I have to read the same page over and over. I keep thinking I’ve made a mistake.”
    “HOW DO YOU GET THROUGH HOMEWORK?”
    By taking forever, he almost said. By not doing it . He couldn’t tell her this. Or that reading sometimes felt like a battle with the voice. “Slowly, I guess. I don’t always do all the reading. I can’t.”
    “WHY DO YOU READ THE SAME PAGE OVER AND OVER?”
    He could hear the voice now. You missed a word. Go back. If you don’t go back nothing will make sense. He’d made a mistake telling her. “No reason. Just trying to be careful.”
    When he got to chemistry, his first class after lunch, he opened his notebook and realized he hadn’t given Amy her schedule card back. He laid both their cards side by side on his desk and noticed that her birthday was one day after his. His was April twenty-fifth, hers the twenty-sixth.