Sanctuary Read Online Free Page A

channel.
    “Is it Gary?” I asked. “I thought you liked him.”
    “He’s all right,” Rob said.
Click. Click. Click
. He was going through channels like Claire Lippman, a champion tanner, went through bottles of sunscreen.
    “Then what’s the matter?”
    “Nothing,” Rob said. “I told you.”
    “Oh.”
    I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. It wasn’t like I’d expected him to propose to me or anything, but I had sort of thought, when he’d invited me to have Thanksgiving dinner with him and his mom, that Rob and I were making some headway, you know, in the relationship department. I thought maybe he was finally going to put aside this ridiculous prejudice he has against me, on account of my being sixteen and him being eighteen and on probation for some crime the nature of which he has yet to reveal to me.
    Instead, the whole thing seemed to have been cooked up by his mom. Not just the dinner, but the invitation, as well.
    “We just don’t see enough of you,” Mrs. Wilkins had said, when I’d come through the door bearing flowers. (Stop and Shop, but what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Besides, they were pretty nice, and had cost me ten whole dollars.) “Do we, Rob?”
    Rob had only glared at me. “You could have called,” he said. “I’d have come and picked you up.”
    “Why should you have gone to all that trouble?” I’d asked, airily. “My mom was fine with me taking the car.”
    “Mastriani, I think you’re forgetting something.”
    “What?”
    “You don’t have a license.”
    For a guy I’d met in detention, you would think Rob would be a lot more open-minded. But he is surprisingly old-fashioned on a large number of topics.
    Such as, I was finding out, his mom and her dating habits.
    “It’s just,” he said, when sounds of playful splashing started coming from the kitchen, “she has to work tomorrow, that’s all. I mean, the whole reason we stayed here instead of going to Evansville with my uncle is that she has to work tomorrow.”
    “Oh,” I said. What else could I say?
    “I just hope he isn’t planning on staying late,” Rob said.
Click. Click. Click
. “Mom’s got the breakfast shift.”
    I knew all about Mrs. Wilkins and her breakfast shift. Before it burned down, Rob’s mom had worked at Mastriani’s. Since it got toasted, she’s been working instead at Joe’s, my mom and dad’s other restaurant.
    “I’m sure he’s going to leave soon,” I said encouragingly, even though it wasn’t even ten o’clock. Rob was way overreacting. “Hey, why don’t we volunteer to do the dishes, so they can, you know, visit?”
    Rob made a face, but since he is basically a guy who would do anything for his mom, on account of his dad having left them both a long time ago, he stood up.
    But when we got into the kitchen, it was clear from the amount of suds being flung about that Just-Call-Me-Gary and Mrs. Wilkins were having a pretty good time doing the dishes themselves.
    “Mom,” Rob said, trying, I could tell, not to get mad. “Isn’t that your good dress?”
    “Oh.” Mrs. Wilkins looked down at herself. “Yes, it is. Where is my apron? Oh, I left it in my bedroom… .”
    “I’ll get it,” I volunteered, because I am nosey and I wanted to see what Mrs. Wilkins’s bedroom looked like.
    “Oh, aren’t you sweet?” Mrs. Wilkins said. And then she aimed the dish nozzle at Just-Call-Me-Gary and got him right in the chest with a stream of hot water.
    Rob looked nauseated.
    Mrs. Wilkins’s bedroom was on the second floor of the tiny little farmhouse she and Rob lived in. Her room was a lot like her, pink and cream and pretty. She had some baby pictures of Rob on the wall that I admired for a few seconds, after I’d found her apron on the bed. That, I thought to myself, is how my kid with Rob would look. If we ever had kids. Which would have to wait until I had a career, first. Oh, and for Rob to propose. Or take me out on a real date.
    In one of