Chapter 18

18

Abraham Lincoln Panim thought about his future quite a bit during the next several weeks. He also went for walks at night, every night, in hopes of meeting up with the girl he had met running during the evening.

He went on these walks many times without his mother, who was busy with school affairs for a few weeks and came home late and exhausted.

And since he was hoping to meet the girl who was running each night, he was kind of happy that his mother was too busy with schoolwork to accompany him. He was a little embarrassed, and he didn’t want his mother to know.

Abraham Lincoln Panim met with the girl just about every night for the next few weeks or so, as she ran every night, and he could pretty much figure out when she would stop for a rest, at the same place and time each and every night.

“How are you doing tonight?” he asked her as she took her regular break during one of those nights.

“I am doing fine,” she replied. “How are you doing?”

“I am OK,” he replied. “It seems to be a little cool outside tonight, and it looks like we are getting a lot of clouds up in the sky. Maybe we are going to get rain.”

“I think we are going to get rain too. I can’t see them, but my bones ache a little bit more when I am running when the weather is like it is, and my pal here”—pointing to her dog—“he kind of gets a little more steady when he is running with me. He doesn’t want me to stumble and fall.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim nodded approval, even though he realized that the girl could not see him.

“Well, look, since I think it is going to rain, I better get moving,” the girl said to Abraham Lincoln Panim. “I guess I will see you around.”

As she got up and started to run, Abraham Lincoln Panim remembered that he had wanted to ask her name, but as she ran away, he decided to put off the formal introduction for another night, something he had done since he met her. He had never had the nerve to ask her name, and she never asked him for his name.

As he got up from the bench, he once again saw what he thought was an older woman sitting a few benches down from him. When he started to walk home, he turned to see the woman again, but once again, she was not there. He didn’t think much of it, and went home.

As for the girl, he thought, “Another night won’t matter much,” he thought, and he headed home in the darkness as raindrops began to fall from the moonlit sky.