Free The Man Without a Face by ALEXANDER_ Page B

revealing the Unappreciation by which Gloria is always surrounded lay solely, and heavily, on me. I watched her carefully over the glass of milk I was drinking to see how the plot developed.
    “Percy, this is my kid brother, Chuck.”
    He tossed his head to get a long curling lock out of the way. “Hi, man.”
    I waved a hand. “Hi,” I said, when I had finished drinking the milk.
    Gloria glanced at the books that I had put down on the table. “Chuck’s trying to get into St. Matthew’s,” she explained in a kindly fashion.
    Percy took a bite out of a doughnut Gloria had taken out of a jar. “Anybody can do that,” he mumbled through a full mouth, showing a lot of teeth and wet dough. Then he swallowed. “What’s your problem, man?”
    “Chuck’s not the academic type,’’ Gloria said, nibbling at a carrot stick, and still eyeing the books.
    My part was beginning to shape up. I was now not only Unappreciative Brother, I was also Backward Brother.
    “Percy goes to Princeton,” Gloria said (as if we all didn’t know), turning the top book around so she could see the title on the spine.
    I suddenly realized that was McLeod’s book, and for all I knew he might have his name in it, and then Gloria would really have a plot to get to work on.
    7I
    I’m not usually a fast thinker. But Gloria’s hand was on the cover of the book about to open it, and emergency bells were clanging in my head. There wasn’t time to put the milk container I was holding down or back in the refrigerator, so I dropped it.
    Milk flew all over the floor and over Gloria’s feet. The People’s Choice for Big Sister vanished as the real Gloria stood up. “You clumsy clot,” she shrieked in her best witchlike voice. “You verminous moron. You did that deliberately.”
    “Gosh, I’m sorry,” I tucked the books under my arm and moved towards the back stairs. “But if you get it off right away everybody says it won’t stain.” I opened the door to the stairs.
    Percy the Pursuer was slapping at his shorts with a rag. “Lousy coordination,” he was muttering. But he was looking in a strange way at Gloria, and who could blame him? America’s sweetheart, voice like an ungreased axle, was enumerating the goodies in store for me once Mother had been apprised of my latest sin.
    “You did that deliberately,” she said, staring up from the floor where she was wiping off her sandals. “I know you, Chuck Norstadt, that’s your subtle way of distracting my attention. You’ve done it before. And don’t think I won’t find out what it is you don’t want me to know and tell Mother. I will, I always do, and then you’ll be so sorry you’ll crawl.”
    I really couldn’t have written her part better myself, if the object was to show Percy what he was about to take to his heart; if not home. Which just goes to prove what everybody says: I’m not very bright. If I had been, I would have given my all to convince Percy what a jewel he was about to acquire. With any luck they’d elope—at the least he’d keep
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    her attention occupied. Instead, I couldn’t have done a more efficient job of showing her up if I’d planned it for a week.
    Her voice followed me up the stairs. I closed my door and stuck a chair under it—there isn’t a key in the house, and in this mood Gloria wouldn’t hesitate to walk in. Then I sat down at the small table that serves me for a desk and cursed my idiocy. It was the big sister bit that got me—of all her acts it’s the most repulsive. When she’s being her real self it’s unpleasant, but nobody’s fooling anybody else. It’s the phoniness that brings out the worst.
    I looked down at McLeod’s book and flipped open the front cover and there, sure enough, was his name: Justin McLeod. Then I nearly fell over because underneath his name was St. Matthew9s School. And then there was a date, I958.
    I did some hasty figuring. He certainly couldn’t have been a student in I958, that was only thirteen