Free The Books of Fell by M.E. Kerr

asked.
“Arizona Darkness.
Figure that one out!”
    We both laughed.
    Delia leaned back against the couch cushions. We were silent for a while. You could hear the sounds of the sea off in the distance. Delia was twirling a strand of her black hair around her finger.
    “Fell? If you could have one wish now, what would it be?”
    “That I could see you tomorrow.”
    She smiled at me. “Not tomorrow. They’re having company. But maybe Monday night.”
    “And what would you wish for?”
    “What would I wish for?” She thought about it for a while. “I want to get away. I want to travel.”
    Then we heard the Stileses arriving, heard Mrs. Stiles say, “Something smells good!”
    “I told you it wouldn’t be much of a date, Fell,” Delia Tremble said.
    I said quickly, “If you’d like to travel, how about traveling out to the Surf Club with me Monday night? You can dance outdoors there.”
    She said okay.

chapter 12
    I’m
all for the idea
[Mom had written].
You’ll get a good education, money to use for college or a restaurant, and don’t you think your father would want you to go? I’ve thought and thought and I vote yes! Jazzy and I are at church. Meat loaf for dinner is cooling, don’t put in fridge…. I think you should tell Mr. Pingree you’ll do it, before he changes his mind!
    But I wanted to think about it, and talk more about it, and figure out how the whole scheme would work.
    “All right,” Pingree said, “but don’t take too long to decide. If I can’t get you to take the offer, I’ll have to think of someone else.”
    Pingree watched me through a cloud of his own cigarette smoke.
    We were sitting out on the front porch of the Frog Pond, having Sunday breakfast. He’d called early and I had said I’d meet him at ten. I couldn’t sleep late, anyway. I usually liked to, when Mom took Jazzy to church and I didn’t have to get up, but I couldn’t. I woke up thinking about going to Gardner as Ping, and I laughed aloud at the idea. I thought of the way kids back in Brooklyn would say “Farrrr out!”
    I kept thinking about Delia Tremble when I first woke up, too. I kept remembering the look in her dark eyes when she talked about sadness. I even got out of bed, pulled on my shorts, and tried to reach Keats at Four Winds. I guess I was guilty because I’d awakened thinking of someone else. Finally. After a year!
    But Keats wasn’t around. They rang that cow bell of theirs and shouted, “Keats! Keats! Keats!” She wasn’t around. The girl who answered the phone asked me if I was Quint. I said yeah, Quint. She said someone just told her Keats was on her way to my motel; she’d left about ten minutes ago.
    “You seem distracted this morning, Fell,” Pingree said. “Or are you just a sad type?”
    I remembered Delia asking me if I was a happy type or a sad type.
    “You ought to know the answer to that. You’ve done enough research on me.”
    “All right. You’re not yourself this morning. Why?”
    “I can’t imagine going through two years answering to the name Ping.”
    “You don’t have to answer to that name. You can be Woodrow, Woody. My middle name is Thompson. You can be Thompson, Tom.” “Just kidding,” I said.
    “I don’t like Ping, either. No one ever called
me
that.”
    There was a young couple behind Pingree who looked as if they’d just left a bedroom somewhere and it was too soon, because they couldn’t stop touching each other. I remembered what that was like back last year when Keats and I would go anyplace. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. What was the word Pingree’d used to describe falling in love? He’d said he was besotted. I’d looked it up later in my Webster’s. It meant mentally stupefied, silly, foolish.
    Pingree looked around to see what I was looking at. He shook his head as though he knew what that was like, too.
    He gave me a wistful smile. “Do you miss Keats?”
    “I miss her. But I don’t think she misses me. I might take