Saint Nicholas Read Online Free Page A

dad, but don’t ask me where. He left about a year ago and never came back.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t be, it’s better off that way.”
    I knew what he meant. Many a times I’d wished my father would just disappear and leave us for good, but I wasn’t that lucky.
    “You go to 35?” he asked, switching the subject to school.
    “Manhattan High,” I rolled my eyes. Just the thought of school gave me butterflies in my stomach, but I’d suffer through them if it meant not having to talk about family.
    “What do you want to be?”
    Again, I was left without an answer. I’d given up a while ago thinking about what I was going to do with my future, because there wasn’t any scenario in my mind that didn’t involve my father. If he had his way I’d be chained to the bed for the rest of my life, living with him until one of us was dead.
    “C’mon,” Nicholas pressed, “you must wanna do something.”
    I shook my head, my hair gently swishing back and forth over my shoulders. “I don’t know,” I said flatly.
    He looked puzzled, but didn’t say anything else for a while.
    I hated that I couldn’t just come right out and tell him what I wanted to. Tell him that my life was a living hell and that every part of me wanted to just run from it every second of the day, right up until I met him, and now I was more confused than ever but in a good way, because being there with him gave me hope. Hope that somehow I’d make it out of my crappy situation and find my place in the world.
    “Well, I want to be a writer,” he said. “Novels, you know?”
    And then he went on and on about the books he liked to read, and the kinds of stories he liked to write. I sat clinging to his every word. The last thing I would have ever expected a kid from Hell’s Kitchen to want to be was a writer. It shocked and intrigued me, both in the best way possible. Hearing the enthusiasm in his voice when he talked was contagious, and it wasn’t long before I had the widest grin on my face.
    “What?” he asked. “You think it’s funny I wanna be a writer?”
    “No,” I said boisterously. “I think it’s awesome. Maybe some day you could write me a story, and then I can open up a bookstore and sell it for you.”
    His eyes narrowed into two slits and he looked at me disbelievingly for a second. “You bustin’ my balls, Sarah?”
    I shook my head. “If I was bustin’ your balls, you’d know it.”
    His eyes widened into quarters and he laughed the sweetest laugh I’d ever heard. Loud and full of life. Full of passion. I couldn’t help but laugh with him.
    “Sure, you can sell my books,” he said. “I think that’s a novel idea.”
    “Novel Idea, that’s what my shop will be called then.”
    He squeezed my hand, offering me a cute, lopsided grin as he looked into my eyes, nodding ever so slightly as if acknowledging the connection we both shared.
    When the conversation somehow made its way back around to family, I listened intently as he told me all about his father, who’d left them a year ago and what a drunk he’d been. When he mentioned the way he’d abused his wife with words and infidelity, I couldn’t believe how closely Nicholas’s life mirrored mine in some ways. He never mentioned his father beating him the way mine did, but he did talk about the way he made his son feel, which was the same way I felt. Worthless.
    “So when he left it was no big thing, you know? It was like, the entire atmosphere in the apartment changed. No more walking on eggshells and stuff. Mom seems happier, though she has a lot to handle, but she gets by. I help her out when I can, cleaning and stuff with Helena. She doesn’t want me to get a job, just focus on school so I can get the hell out of here one day. What about you, you want to get out of here?”
    “More than you know,” I said, alluding to my situation at home, but too afraid to say anything.
    He didn’t press it, but I could tell by the way he looked at me that