Water For Elephants Read Online Free Page B

leather-bound books. Behind him, the sun streaks through lead-paned windows. I am filled with sudden loathing—I'll bet he's never taken payment in the form of beans and eggs in his life.
    I lean forward and make eye contact. I want this to be his problem, too. "What am I supposed to do?" I ask slowly.
    "I don't know, son. I wish I did. The country's fallen on hard times, and that's a fact." He leans back in his chair, his fingers still steepled. He cocks his head, as though an idea has just occurred to him. "I suppose you could go west," he muses.
    Water for E l e p h a n ts
    It dawns on me that if I don't get out of this office right now, I'm going to slug him. I rise, replace my hat, and leave.
    When I reach the sidewalk something else dawns on me. I can think of only one reason my parents would need a mortgage: to pay my Ivy League tuition.
    The pain from this sudden realization is so intense I double over, clutching my stomach.
    BECAUSE NO OTHER options occur to me, I return to school—a temporary solution at best. My room and board is paid up until the end of the year, but that is only six days away.
    I've missed the entire week of review lectures. Everyone is eager to help. Catherine hands me her notes and then hugs me in a way that suggests I might get different results if I were to attempt the usual quest. I pull away. For the first time in living memory, I have no interest in sex.
    I can't eat. I can't sleep. And I certainly can't study. I stare at a single paragraph for a quarter of an hour but can't absorb it. How can I, when
    behind the words, on the white background of the paper, I'm watching an endless loop of my parents' deaths? Watching as their cream-colored Buick flies through the guardrail and over the side of the bridge to avoid old Mr. McPherson's red truck? Old Mr. McPherson, who confessed as he was led from the scene that he wasn't entirely sure what side of the road he should have been on and thinks that maybe he hit the gas instead of the brake? Old Mr. McPherson, who showed up at church one legendary Easter without trousers?
    THE PROCTOR SHUTS the door and takes his seat. He glances at the wall clock and waits until the minute hand wobbles forward. "You may begin."
    Fifty-two exam booklets flip over. Some people riffle through it. Others start writing immediately. I do neither.
    Forty minutes later, I have yet to touch pencil to paper. I stare at the booklet in desperation. There are diagrams, numbers, lines and chartsstrings of words with terminal punctuation at the end—some are periods, S a r a G r u en
    some question marks, and none of it makes sense. I wonder briefly if it is even English. I try it in Polish, but that doesn't work either. It might as well be hieroglyphics.
    A woman coughs and I jump. A bead of sweat falls from my forehead onto my booklet. I wipe it off with my sleeve, then pick the booklet up. Maybe if I bring it closer. Or hold it farther away—I can see now that
    it is in English; or rather, that the individual words are English, but I cannot read from one to another with any sense of continuity.
    A second drop of sweat falls.
    I scan the room. Catherine is writing quickly, her light brown hair falling over her face.
    She is left-handed, and because she writes in pencil her left arm is silver from wrist to elbow. Beside her, Edward yanks himself upright, glances at the clock in panic, and slumps back over his booklet. I turn away, toward a window.
    Snatches of sky peek through leaves, a mosaic in blue and green that shifts gently with the wind. I stare into it, allowing my focus to soften, looking beyond the leaves and branches. A squirrel bounds fatly across my sight line, its full tail cocked.
    I shove my chair back with a violent screech and stand up. My brow is beaded, my fingers shaking. Fifty-two faces turn to look.
    I should know these people, and up until a week ago I did. I knew where their families lived. I knew what their fathers did. I knew whether they had