Crooked by Laura McNeal Page A

practice, they were just blocking their moves on the stage and getting measured for costumes. But it was pleasant in the little auditorium with the warm lights, the wooden floor, the Roaring Twenties set, and Mrs. Van Riper’s voice sailing musically over the din. “People! People! Opening night approaches and we are far far from ready!” Backstage was a bustle of clothes and good cheer, and for the first time in days, it seemed to Clara, life was a warmer, cheerier place. Gerri was still being horrible, but she’d gotten the letter from Amos, and her father was off in Dalton, maybe sitting in Aunt Marie’s guest room right now, at this very moment, listening to her mother confess that she’d made a mistake and wanted to come home and straighten everything out with everybody. That could happen.
That,
Clara thought, standing in front of a large cardboard speakeasy,
could very easily happen
.

14
    CHINESE CHECKERS
    It was the longest weekend Amos could remember. After Amos had sent him off, Bruce hadn’t stopped by or even called, and although Amos knew he had no right to hope that Clara Wilson might call him over the weekend, he’d hoped it anyway and been disappointed.
    Amos lay on the sofa and did his makeup homework, but only halfheartedly. He watched sports events on ESPN that he could not have cared less about, and then fought with his sister when she wanted to turn the channel to some Saturday afternoon dance show. He just felt lazier and lazier and crankier and crankier. He wasn’t hungry, so he hardly ate. Even Saturday night, when his mother made pork chops and applesauce especially for him, he just picked at it. His father tried to perk him up by advising him that the Blue Jays were leading the Grapefruit League, and Amos said, “That’s only spring training, Dad. Everybody knows spring training standings don’t mean anything.” Worse, even though he knew he might’ve hurt his father’s feelings, Amos couldn’t break out of his mood enough to care.
    On Sunday nights, the whole family usually watched a Perry Mason rerun and ate cheeseburgers with milk shakes, but the doctor was going to do some kind of procedure on Amos’s father the following day, and this meant that all day Sunday, his father had to drink some kind of mineral oil that cleaned out his whole body. So Liz and Amos had cheeseburgers while their mother went upstairs with their father, who’d gone to lie down. Amos turned the TV to Perry Mason at seven o’clock, but no one came into the living room until almost eight, when his mother sat down to read one of her new religious books and his father carefully laid out a board game on the coffee table in front of Amos’s sofa. Amos let him. Amos waited until he was completely done laying it out with like-colored marbles in all their colored holes. Then he said, “Dad, don’t you think I’m a little too old for a game like Chinese checkers?”
    Amos knew at once that he shouldn’t have said it. It was rude, and he expected his father to say something sharp about his rudeness. But what happened was far worse. His father’s face turned suddenly pink, as if he’d just been slapped, and then just as suddenly it lost all its color. His father looked almost tearful, but surely that couldn’t be. He looked completely defeated, as though he had just realized something final and irreversible. Just as soon as this look came over him, his father straightened himself and walked from the room with as much dignity as he could.
    All at once his mother was putting down her book, hurrying from the room, and saying, “Shame on you. Shame on you, Amos Thomas MacKenzie.”

15
    SWALLOWED BY A WHALE
    Clara’s weekend had been no better. On Friday night, she waited up after play practice for her father. She took a quilt with her to the couch and curled up where she could see the hall light shining. On the hope