Little Red Lies Read Online Free Page B

that he’s rebelling against Mother constantly telling him what to do.
    “I’m every bit as alarmed as you are at his weight loss,” Mother says. She has an edge to her voice, as if Granny’s blaming her.
    “It’s merely excitement,” Dad says. “Let’s not over-mother the boy.”
    “I’m hardly a boy.”
    Mother brings in the coffee.
    “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me,” Jamie says. “It’s just that I can’t settle down yet. Everything’s going so fast.”
    “What do you mean, fast?” Mother asks.
    “I don’t know. I don’t mean anything. Just don’t keep at me.” He takes a cigarette package from his shirt pocket.
    “You’re smoking too much.”
    Jamie leaves the table and lights a cigarette, heading up to his room to smoke in peace. I don’t blame him.
    Letters not sent
.
    Everything is very hush-hush over here, but we all get the sense that we’re about to give it to the Huns. Everybody’s hoarding cigarettes
.
    I never thought I would feel the need to smoke, back when I was in high school. That sure changed the day I turned eighteen. It was a Friday. I went over to the armories after school and volunteered to have my life shot out from under me. Scariest thing I ever did
.
    Coop had already signed up for the air force. I chose the army, I guess because I thought I’d be safer on the ground than off it
.
    I was going to tell you all that day at dinner, Rachel, but I couldn’t, not with Mother and Dad bustling around, making my birthday memorable. You gave me a swell magnifying glass, remember? You told me I could even start fires with it, if I got lost in the woods on a cold day. And then you added, “If the sun was shining and you happened to have it with you.” You were sure pleased with yourself
.
    After supper, I went fishing with Coop. He was still waiting to be sent to the airfield in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He managed to get his hands on a case of beer and also brought along a pack of cigarettes. We lugged the beer out to the river, along with our fishing rods, and drank beer and smoked, but didn’t do much fishing. It struck me funny that we were too young to drink legally, but not too young to die for king and country. Coop laughed at this. He said, “You think too much, Mac.” Remember how he always called me Mac? He said, “Have another beer. And here, have a smoke while you’re at it.” I’d tried smoking once before but hadn’t liked it that much. I thought I’d better learn, though, before I went overseas. It would prove I am a man
.
    Oh, boy, did I suffer next morning. My mouth was dry and smelled like a sewer, and my head felt like someone had hit it with a sandbag. But I had something to say. Just to get it over with, I confessed that I’d signed up. Remember how Mother yelped? You’d think she’d been grazed by a bullet. And she ran upstairs crying. You just stared at me in this awful silence, and your eyes looked like great overfilled soup plates. And Dad, all he did was frown into his coffee cup. Finally, I think he said, “Well, I guess you were bound to doit sooner or later, son.” And then he got up from the table and walked with a kind of stoop to his shoulders upstairs to calm Mother down
.
    A minute later, I ask to be excused from the dinner table. Upstairs, Jamie’s bedroom door is half open.
    “Can I come in?”
    “Sure.”
    He’s tipped back in his chair, his head floating in a fog of smoke. Stacked on the desk in front of him are the newspaper clippings about the war Dad saved, as well as a pile of papers with handwriting on them looped together with string.
    “What’s all that?”
    “Nothing much.”
    He quickly bundles everything into the bottom drawer of his desk. I sit cautiously on the edge of his bed. Neither of us has much to say, it seems.
    He doesn’t look like he has anything wrong with him to me. Sure, he’s pretty thin, but so am I, and nobody says there’s anything wrong with me. Except for eczema. I sit there