No Signature Read Online Free Page B

this time. One day’s suspension.”
    The system made me laugh sometimes. I mean, Davis was sitting there at her desk with two frameduniversity degrees hanging on the wall behind her, telling me that, as punishment for missing a couple of days of school, I was going to have to miss a day of school. Figure that one out. That’s like saying the penalty for stealing a car was to go and steal another car.
    But what the hell. I had a creative writing assignment due in two days, so now I’d have lots of time to work on it I’d have to explain things to Coach Leonard, though. He was training me hard for a big invitational tournament in Thunder Bay in July and he didn’t like me to miss practice.
REPLAY
    After the postcards stopped coming I gradually got used to things the way they were. That’s what little kids have to do—get used to things. They can’t change anything. They can’t control things or make things happen. Most of the time nobody asks them what they think or feel or want. Parents, teachers, others, but especially parents, do things, and the little kid’s job is to adapt, to fit himself into a world somebody else made for him.

EIGHT
    I T WAS A WARM SUNNY SPRING AFTERNOON . A S soon as I came into the house my mother started shrieking. I was late. I had forgotten, hadn’t I? Where had I been, anyway? I never thought of anyone but myself.
    Well, I
had
forgotten that we were supposed to go to my grandparents’ for Sunday dinner, but it wasn’t like I’d been down at Sick Kids’ Hospital selling crack to the patients. I had been over at Sara’s working on a science report, which meant her doing all the work and me listening to tapes and talking to her. I dumped my books on my bed and headed for the shower. Fifteen minutes later I was ready to go.
    “You’re not going in
that
, are you?”
    I was wearing jeans, a Rush T-shirt and unlaced high-tops. My mother had on a dark blue pant-suit over a white silk blouse with a red scarf at the throat. We didn’t match too well. I didn’t feel like an argument so I went back upstairs and threw on an old corduroy sports jacket.
    When I came down again she was already out in the car with the engine running, smoking a cigarette. As she backed out of the driveway I turned on the radio. My mother immediately switched it off. “You know I can’t concentrate on the road with that thing blasting,”she complained, carefully putting the BMW into Drive. I slipped a Bruce Cockburn tape into my Walkman.
    I knew my mother was nervous about going to her parents’ place. She always seemed uncomfortable around them, as if she was still a kid trying to measure up. To tell the truth, I felt kind of sorry for her—when she wasn’t driving me batty with her passion for making money and doing the right thing. She smoked heavily, chewed Rolaids as if they were candy, and went through a bottle of powdered organic laxative every two weeks. She hardly ever laughed. She was good-looking and dressed sharp, but never had time to date. She was skilled at her job—she was a partner in her accounting firm—but didn’t know how to relax when she got home from the office. Her briefcase was always stuffed with extra work. She constantly worried about what other people thought—her colleagues, the neighbours, my teachers. When it came time for the cleaning lady to come, my mother would fly into a panic and tidy up the house so Mrs. Nadimi wouldn’t think we were slobs. Who cleans up for the cleaning lady? What kind of logic is that?
    We rode along through the Sunday traffic, me listening to my tunes, my mother gripping the steering wheel and glaring ahead as if there were terrorists out there aiming rocket-launchers at the car. Just once, I thought, I’d like to see her relax, loosen up a little, have some fun.
    My grandparents lived in one of those neighbourhoods where the tree-lined streets never go in a straight line and are never called streets. They’re all “lanes” or