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

chain around his neck-he's got his back to me but I can see the chain
winking in the sun. Then he turns around and I see ... oh I can't believe
it but it's true, it's really him, it's Tom Gordon, why he's in Sanford is
a mystery hut it's him, all right, and oh God his eyes, just like when he's
looking in for the sign with men on base, those eyes, and he smiles and
says he's a little lost, he wonders if I know a town called North Berwick,
how to get there, and oh God, oh my God I'm shaking, I won't he able to say
a word, I'll open my mouth and nothing will come out but a little dry
squeak, what Dad calls a mousefart, only when I try I can speak, I sound
almost normal, and I say ...
I say, he says, then I say and then he says: thinking about how they
might talk while the fighting in the front seat of the Caravan drew
steadily farther away. (Sometimes, Trisha had decided, silence was life's
greatest blessing.) She was still looking fixedly at the signature on the
visor of her baseball cap when Mom turned into the parking area, still far
away (Trish is off in her own world was how her father put it), unaware
that there were teeth hidden in the ordinary texture of things and she
would soon know it. She was in Sanford, not in TR-90. She was in the town
park, not at an entry-point to the Appalachian Trail. She was with Tom
Gordon, Number 36, and he was offering to buy her a hotdog in exhange for
directions to North Berwick. Oh, bliss.


First Inning

MOM AND PETE gave it a rest as they got their packs and Quilla's
wicker plant-collection basket out of the van's back end; Pete even helped
Trisha get her pack settled evenly on her back, tightening one of the
straps, and she had a moment's foolish hope that now things were going to
be all right.
"Kids got your ponchos?" Mom asked, looking up at the sky. There was
still blue up there, but the clouds were thickening in the west. It very
likely would rain, but probably not soon enough for Pete to have a
satisfying whine about being soaked.
"I've got mine, Mom!" Trisha chirruped in her
oh-boy-waterless-cookware voice.
Pete grunted something that might have been yes.
"Lunches?"
Affirmative from Trisha; another low grunt from Pete.
"Good, because I'm not sharing mine." She locked the Caravan, then led
them across the dirt lot toward a sign marked TRAIL WEST, with an arrow
beneath. There were maybe a dozen other cars in the lot, all but theirs
with out-of-state plates.
"Bug-spray?" Mom asked as they stepped onto the path leading to the
trail. "Trish?"
"Got it!" she chirruped, not entirely positive she did but not wanting
to stop with her back turned so that Mom could have a rummage. That would
get Pete going again for sure. If they kept walking, though, he might see
something which would interest him, or at least distract him. A raccoon.
Maybe a deer. A dinosaur would be good. Trisha giggled.