Read The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B for Free Online Page A

him in at dawn.”
    “Yeah.” She nodded. “Seven forty-five sharp or Sister Mary-Margaret will come after you with a lecture and rosary in hand. We can’t have Adam squandering God-given opportunities.”
    His mom glanced at the wall clock. “Okay, give us another thirty or forty minutes to finish up dinner. Yeah. Okay. No, it’s okay … Yeah, I know.” More nodding. “Believe me, I know.” Sigh. “Bye.”
    Adam opened up the containers. “Sweetie’s in a state?”
    His mother ladled out the goulash. “Yeah, and like I said, I get it. Well, not whatever is cranking that little boy—you never got into ‘states’—but I get where she’s at. What I don’t get—” Mrs. Ross plopped some glistening butter noodles on top of the goulash. That’s the way they both liked it. “What I don’t get is what you bring to the party. No offense.”
    Adam frowned and started swirling his noodles. “Is it possible … I mean, does what Sweetie …? Did I make him nuts? Is it because of me, because I’m the way I am?”
    Carmella grabbed her son’s hand with an urgency thatsurprised them both. “No! Don’t say that! Don’t you dare think that about you or him!” She let go. “Besides, that kid is not nuts—he’s a sweetie! You
know
that. Look, he’s wired up a little too tight is all, and Brenda frets about him too much. He’ll toughen up, mark my words.”
    “But he could have got the wiring from me.”
    “Right, Einstein. Who’s the science genius in this room? You know how this goes. Same dad, different mother—you don’t enter the picture. You don’t even get to be in the picture, my gorgeous, genius boy. Sweetie doesn’t even have your father’s traits. Your dad’s an ass and the kid is adorable.”
    “Mom.”
    “Well, it’s true.”
    “Which part?”
    “Both.” Carmella smiled. “Not only that, but I’ve never seen one breathing being devoted to another as much as that kid of theirs is to you. I guess what you bring to the party, come to think of it, is some kind of weird ‘feel better’ gift for Sweetie.”
    They finished their goulash side by side, in semi-comfortable silence.
    Brenda honked the horn while Adam was throwing socks into his backpack. Because he spent so much time at his father’s house and had a lot of his stuff there already, he could get ready in seconds. He glanced at his watch: twenty-five minutes. It must be a bad one.
    She honked again—politely, though. Brenda was nothing if not well-mannered. The new Mrs. Ross wouldn’t dream of entering the house, because she had been askednot to by the old Mrs. Ross. That had more to do with the state of 97 Chatsworth than any natural hostility between the women, because truth be told, there wasn’t much.
    The two Mrs. Rosses were mirror opposites. It was like his dad went for a total purge, with Brenda being the anti-Carmella. Adam’s stepmother was blond, pristine and polite against Carmella’s dark and compelling exuberance. Carmella’s house was aggressive chaos. Brenda’s was an homage to
Architectural Digest
, each room patiently waiting for its photo shoot. He had to hand it to his dad, though: both women were attractive even on their most harried days. Their appearance was noted at every parent function at St. Mary’s. Adam looked very much like his mother, yet also like his father. This meant that he “fit” seamlessly into both houses, and neither.
    What remained exactly the same was that Mr. Ross was ever-absent, off on far-flung engineering projects or holed up in his downtown office. If anything, his absences grew longer as his home life, which now included two complicated sons, grew more … well, complicated. He was not, as Brenda and even his mom on occasion knew, an uncaring man. Just a missing one.
    As soon as Adam set foot outside, the back door to the Mercedes flew open. Wendell “Sweetie” Ross launched himself out of his booster seat and straight into his brother’s arms like a