Free All the Roads That Lead From Home by Anne Leigh Parrish Page B

great
times, ladies out on the town, but Pinny could tell her mother found it boring
and probably wanted to come home. Pinny’s father wasn’t asking her to anymore,
not the way he had the winter before, around the holidays, and Pinny’s mother
hinted that she might return before the end of the summer, if things
improved . Pinny didn’t know what things she referred to, and knew better
than to ask.
     
    ***
     
    The days got long and
warm and school was as dull as toast. There was nothing to pay attention to and
nothing to get upset about.
    Then the
fat girl fell in love. The boy was Carl Pratt, and Pinny saw nothing remarkable
about him, except that he was skinny and tall and threw a good softball in gym
class.
    “You’re
nuts,” the fat girl said. “He’s totally hot. And I think he likes me.” Carl
Pratt looked at Pinny, not at the fat girl when they were together. Pinny had
gotten very curvy in the last year, and when Carl Pratt smiled, he was smiling
at Pinny and Pinny knew it, so she tried to discourage the fat girl’s passion
for Carl Pratt, saying he was a geek, he had greasy hair, he didn’t know how to
tie his own shoes. The proof of that were the gray laces that flopped by his
huge feet as he took himself at full tilt down the hall, his notebook pressed
flat against his hard thigh, and his pen balanced with the grace of a feather
behind his ear.
    After
making eyes at Pinny for two whole weeks, Carl Pratt appeared at her locker,
put his hand firmly on her back and said, “You’re awfully sweet, you know
that?” Her response was a solid blow to his upper arm, which made him gaze down
at her with pure adoration before wandering away.
    When the
fat girl realized that Carl Pratt actually liked Pinny, she was driven to
bitter weeping, and flung herself down on Pinny’s bed so hard the springs
creaked and the headboard slapped the wall. Her milk white arms raised above
her head in a gesture of defeat and she said, “I’m going to take a header off
the bridge.”
    There were
several bridges in Dunston to choose from, all built across a deep section of
gorge. People committed suicide by jumping from them every year, usually
students from the Ivy League university when semester grades were posted.
Locals didn’t jump. They shot themselves, or were found hanging from a barn
beam, or on the floor with an empty bottle of sleeping pills.
    “Bull,”
said Pinny. The fat girl looked at her with wet eyes and howled with misery. By
the time she stopped crying, the light had died in the spring sky and Pinny’s
father called up the stairs to ask what was for dinner.
    Pinny
fried some hot dogs in a pan and heated a can of yellow corn. She put slices of
bread in the toaster and spread peanut butter on them. Her father and the fat
girl ate their food without a word. Then her father looked at the fat girl and
asked, “Who’s the fella?”
    “What
fella?” asked Pinny.
    “The one
who’s got her down in the dumps, of course.”
    Pinny said
Carl Pratt’s name.
    “Pratt.
Father’s Don Pratt? Sold him a Buick last year. Good car. Wouldn’t go for the
extended warranty. Only a couple hundred bucks more. Just couldn’t talk him
into it.”
    The fat
girl wiped her nose on a paper napkin.
    “Well,
it’s his loss,” she said. Pinny wasn’t sure if the fat girl meant Carl Pratt or
his father, but the statement worked, either way.
     
    ***
     
    Pinny asked Carl Pratt to
be nice to the fat girl as a favor to her.
    “What, are
you kidding?” he asked. They were in the gym where basketball practice had just
ended and Carl Pratt was gathering up basketballs.
    “She
really likes you.”
    “Gross.”
    “You’re
mean.”
    “Not to
you, I’m not.” And then he kissed Pinny right on the lips. She thought it was
the most disgusting thing she’d ever done and that she’d probably never kiss
anyone again as long as she lived. But, since Carl Pratt seemed to like it so
much, Pinny soon learned she could get what she