Free Personal Touch by Caroline B. Cooney Page A

different, I thought. Second Tim Around. This summer either he’d rub right or he’d use matches.
    How dull, I thought. How absolutely dull and like other boys. Don’t let Tim get dull, God. Wouldn’t it be awful if Tim solidified into the sort of man who’s genuinely happy selling chairs to summer people?
    I decided I did not necessarily want a Second Tim Around.
    “Why don’t you two kids wander on down Main Street and see what there is?” suggested my father. “I read in the paper that this year they have over one hundred fifty exhibitors.”
    “Ought to be at least one interesting booth in that many,” agreed Tim.
    “I’d go myself,” said my father, “but I’m too tired to budge. Give my regards to the elementary school P.T.A. booth, will you?”
    “Tired?” said my mother indignantly. “You haven’t done one thing all day but close the shop door.”
    “If you find any good hand-thrown pottery, come back and tell me,” said Mrs. Lansberry. “I love it. And I need a lot, because every time Tim crosses a room he’s apt to bump something off a shelf. The survival rate of my pottery is very poor.”
    Tim laughed. And then this marvelous thing happened: he stood up first and reached a hand down to help me up.
    I tried to think of a way to hang on to his hand permanently, but Tim nearly always walks with his hands jammed deep into his pockets, and he’s told me more than once that he feels lopsided when he can only get one hand pocketed. So I didn’t hold his hand very tightly. I let him hold mine and, sure enough, he let go in a moment and shoved both hands deep into his jeans’ pockets.
    Well, it was a start. After all, the good guy in the Western paperback doesn’t toss the young maiden up onto the magnificent horse in the very first chapter. He builds up to it.
    “If this were the good old days,” said Tim, “I’d have something special planned for the end of the road. Some really devious thing you’d never suspect.”
    A nice devious thing for you to do, I thought, would be to swing me into some quiet corner and kiss me.
    Instead he bought us tickets to throw plastic rings at distant plastic knobs. Violently colored stuffed animals were offered as prizes. I definitely did not want one. There’s nothing dumber-looking than somebody at a fair carting around some huge lime-green teddy bear.
    Fortunately neither of us was an especially competent plastic-ring thrower.
    When we left that booth I thought I might just silently take Tim’s hand, saying nothing, being very subtle—but he jammed his hands into his pockets a little too fast for me. I could always take his wrist, but then I’d feel like a pair of handcuffs.
    Tim stopped so abruptly he had to take a hand out of his pocket and grab my elbow to stop me. I didn’t object. “What is it?” I said, hoping that a crush similar to mine had just struck him.
    “Pottery.”
    How depressing. All he wanted was a clay bowl for his mother. I watched him pick over the pottery. If he was that careful choosing a girlfriend, no wonder he never dated! Tim found flaws on every single piece he examined. The woman who’d made it began to look a bit tense around the edges. Tim often has that effect on people.
    “It’s for my mother,” he explained to the lady. “Has to be perfect.”
    “Why?” I said. “She just told us all that would happen to the bowl is that you’ll break it.”
    Tim loved that. “Okay,” he said to the potter, “I’ll take that one over there. The one with the big crack across the bottom. Prebroken, so to speak.” He had her wrap it in sparkling tissue and ribbon.
    I thought a boy of seventeen should be less interested in buying his mother presents and more interested in girls, but I didn’t say so. After all, I bought things for my mother, too. In fact, maybe I would buy her a piece of pottery.
    I chose one without a flaw. A lovely little blue glazed pitcher for, the potter told me, pouring cream at breakfast. Tim