Paper Walker

Chapter 15

 "Sorley Patrick Connor, this is not what we've agreed upon."

The voice scares the wits out of me and I turn completely red when I see grandma Meghan looking at us with an angry expression.

"Young lady, if you wish to stay here, I want you to honour my rules. Now go, back to the guest room. I've placed clean towels in the bathroom."

As fast as I can, I hurl myself of the bed and speed away from Sorley's room. Not until I'm under the shower, does my breathing calm down. And then I burst out laughing. I cover my face with my hands and bend over. Oh this is terrible. How can I face his grandma after this?

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Connor", is the first thing I say when I walk into the kitchen, all clean and wearing my least wrinkled dress. "It won't happen again."

She accepts my sorrow with a nod and motions at the breakfast table that is filled with the most delicious smelling food I've ever seen.

"Oh, wow, this looks amazing. I'm so hungry." Sorley isn't here yet, but I don't dare to ask about him. He comes in when I fill my plate for a second time and cheerfully smiles at us. His hair is wet, so he must have taken a shower as well. How would he do that?

Because his grandma sits with us, we don't say much. I do however, burst out giggling every time I look his way and after the third time, grandma Meghan clicks her tongue again. "You two as bad as my husband and I were at your age." A melancholy smile appears on her barely wrinkled face, so I don't think she minds very much.

---

After breakfast Sorley shows me his house. That everything is on the ground floor isn't so much a luxury, as a necessity.

"We moved here after my parents accident", he tells me. "It isn't very big, but big enough for the two of us."

The largest part of the house exists of the living room, kitchen and his grandmothers bedroom. The part on the right is the guest quarters, that is always tidy and clean, but never actually used. On the left is Sorley's domain.

When we enter the bedroom, I feel my cheeks heat up. We are both silent when I look around. I think Sorley is watching me, but I'm afraid to check. At least until my face cools down a bit. To distract myself, I look at the stereo. My entire musical equipment consists of my cellphone and ear-plugs, but Sorley even owns a gramophone.

"It belonged to my father." He rides his wheelchair close next to me. "He loved music and owned mountains of CDs and LPs. Almost all of that we got rid off, because it didn't fit in the room and I'm not much of a listener. I wanted to keep this thing, even though it mostly just collects a lot of dust."

I press a button, but nothing happens.

"Hmm, apparently there isn't even a disk in it." Sorley opens a drawer and rummages a little through the things inside. I watch over his shoulder, but see nothing I recognize.

"This one?" He hold up a CD an I say: "What ever you want, I don't know it. But I don't have to hear something necessarily. I'm not much of a listener either."

The disk vanishes in the drawer again and I bite my tongue. A bit of music would have broken the silence. Now the tension worsens every second in which we say nothing. Until I remember the bookcase.

"Hey, that library of yours, is that in the next room?" I point at the doors and look at Sorley, who relaxes the muscles in his jaws and nods.

"The left one. On the right is the bathroom."

Too much aware of the discomfort we're in, I mix up left and right and open the wrong door. Seeing the obvious meant-for-invalids toilet and special wheelchair, still wet from Sorley's shower this morning, makes me truly realize for the first time, why Sorley was so reluctant to tell me about his handicap.