Status Updates From The Folded Leaf

Even so, Reinhart felt that some explanation was necessary. "My aunt sent it to me, he said. "She does that once in awhile. I don't happen to need it just now and I thought maybe you could use it." Rein hart who hadn't had a new suit in three years, who had no aunt, whose debts were as numerous as the sands of the sea.

She had fluffy light-brown hair and hazel eyes and at nineteen she was pretty in a sly, selfish way. She saw Sally and Spud, and without waiting to be asked, sat down with them. Arm-strong moved in beside her. There was no room for Lymie when he appeared. Spud wanted to move over, so that he could squeeze in next to them, but Lymie insisted that he had a conference with his German instructor and fled.

WITH ITH school almost over

for the year and summer vacation looming ahead, the loss of a meeting place made very little difference to any of them Spud Latham and Lymie Peters met in the corridor by Spud's locker, after school, and went off together. Lymie had a malted milk and Spud had a milk shake and then they came out of the stale air of LeClerc's and separated. Or else Lymie went home with Spud.

To accept it without bitterness or envy you need almost the sum total of human wisdom, which Lymie Peters at fifteen did not have. He couldn't help noticing that the scales of fortune were tipped considerably in Spud's favor, and resenting it But what gnawed at him most was that Spud should be, be sides, a natural athlete, the personification of the daydream which he himself most frequently i

The morning after the initiation, while he was still drugged with sleep, Spud discovered that there was something wrong with him. For a second he didn't believe it. I could be dream ing that I'm awake and standing here in the bathroom, he told himself; but he actually was awake. There was no doubt about it.

12



OF THE many ways of knowing people, the eye's appraisal is surely the most com-plete; but Spud Latham's eyes, which saw only enemies, would never have perceived that the boy ahead of him was not like the others. Spud's eyes were bandaged now and for guidance he had to depend on his right hand, which was resting on a naked shoulder. The shoulder was very thin.