"Stephen King. The Girl who loved Tom Gordon." - читать интересную книгу автора

Massachusetts-but of course she said nothing. The Saturday outings
themselves were wrong, but Mom would never accept that. By the end of some
of them Quilla Andersen looked at least five years older than when they had
set out, with deep lines grooved down the sides of her mouth and one hand
constantly rubbing her temple, as if she had a headache ... but she would
still never stop. Trisha knew it. Maybe if her mother had been at Little
Big Horn the Indians still would have won, but the body-count would have
been considerably higher.
This week's outing was to an unincorporated township in the western
part of the state. The Appalachian Trail wound through the area on its way
to New Hampshire. Sitting at the kitchen table the night before, Mom had
shown them photos from a brochure. Most of the pictures showed happy hikers
either striding along a forest trail or standing at scenic lookouts,
shading their eyes and peering across great wooded valleys at the
time-eroded but still formidable peaks of the central White Mountains.
Pete sat at the table, looking cataclysmically bored, refusing to give
the brochure more than a glance. For her part, Mom had refused to notice
his ostentatious lack of interest. Trisha, as was increasingly her habit,
became brightly enthusiastic. These days she often sounded to herself like
a contestant on a TV game show, all but peeing in her pants at the thought
of winning a set of waterless cookware. And how did she feel to herself
these days? Like glue holding together two pieces of something that was
broken. Weak glue.
Quilla had closed the brochure and turned it over. On the back was a
map. She tapped a snaky blue line. "This is Route 68," she said. "We'll
park the car here, in this parking lot." She tapped a tittle blue square.
Now she traced one finger along a snaky red line. "This is the Appalachian
Trail between Route 68 and Route 302 in North Conway, New Hampshire. It's
only six miles, and rated Moderate. Welt ... this one little section in the
middle is marked Moderate-to-Difficult, but not to the point where we'd
need climbing gear or anything."
She tapped another blue square. Pete was leaning his head on one hand,
looking the other way. The heel of his palm had pulled the left side of his
mouth up into a sneer, He had started getting pimples this year and a fresh
crop gleamed on his forehead. Trisha loved him, but sometimes last night at
the kitchen table, as Mom explained their route, for example-she hated him,
too. She wanted to tell him to stop being a chicken, because that was what
it came down to when you cut to the chase, as their Dad said. Pete wanted
to run back to Malden with his little teenage tail between his legs because
he was a chicken. He didn't care about Mom, didn't care about Trisha,
didn't even care if being with Dad would be good for him in the long run.
What Pete cared about was not having anyone to eat lunch with on the gym
bleachers. What Pete cared about was that when he walked into homeroom
after the first bell someone always yelled, "Hey CompuWorld! Howya doon,
homo-boy?"
"This is the parking lot where we come out," Mom had said, either not
noticing that Pete wasn't looking at the map or pretending not to. "A van
shows up there around three. It'll take us back around to our car. Two
hours later we're home again, and I'll haul you guys to a movie if we're
not too tired. How does that sound?"