Tags
"Artemis Fowl", "You read a page then I read a page.", 528 Gareth Court, Bicycling, Cal Kelly, Cary North Carolina, Connie Lehn, Dan Inks, Kildaire Farm Road, Menlo Manner, Menlo Manner Subdivision, Quixote Lane, Reluctant Reader, Samantha Lehn, US Highway 1, Wimbledon Neighborhood
Even though Dan Inks was acting as tour guide, Samantha Lehn led the way as he escorted his eleven-year-old neighbor, her mother Connie, and grandfather Calpurnius Kelly on a low key, slow speed, bike meander around the just north of Menlo Manner, Wimbledon neighborhood, a neighborhood where the homes were old enough to have well-established landscaping, but new enough to still look fresh rather than tired. Cochet Court, the street down which they were currently cycling, provided a gentle, southwesterly downhill that culminated in the bottom-of-the-sack cul-de-sac circle that the quartet circumnavigated before heading back uphill along the road that had aided them with a perceptible but miserly downhill moments before.
“So you’re an Artemis Fowl fan, huh?” Dan asked Samantha, referencing her comment about centaurs.
“Yeah, they’re good,” Sam said, nodding her head. “Do you read Artemis Fowl?”
“Not so much read as read,” Dan replied with a smile. “My older brother Nate got the first one back at a book fair when I was in like third grade? He really enjoyed it and said I might too; I did, and I think we read all of them along with our sisters, but the last one came out when I was a freshman in college, so it’s been a while.”
“What’s your favorite?”
“Oh,” Dan replied, his face twisted in surprise, “Uh. Probably the first one. I was kind of a reluctant reader, and Artemis Fowl got me hooked. How about you?”
“The Eternity Code! I really like that one.”
“Me too! My parents gave me my own copy for my tenth birthday, not that it really mattered who owned which book since we all shared them.”
“It must be nice to have brothers and sisters,” Sam said whimsically.
“Depends on the day and how old you are. It was good when I was little and it’s good now, but those early teen years are hard.”
“Tell me about it!” Cal interjected. “Two boys, two girls, ten years between ‘em. We’ve read some of those together, right?” he asked Sam.
“Yeah! You used to read them to me, then we moved to you’d read a page then I’d read a page, and then you got me reading them to you when you said your eyes didn’t work like they used to.”
“Right! I remember the, ‘You read a page, I read a page,’ bit when you started reading chapter books but sometimes the particular books are a bit cloudy for me. Artemis Fowl was fun.”
“And it was great listening to you two read to each other,” Connie said.
“Ladies and gentlemen?” Dan said, assuming an airline pilot voice, “we’re approaching Sedgman Court, where we’ll turn this bird in a southeasterly direction before circling the court proper and heading back to Everett Drive. MS Inks, please signal our intention to turn via an outstretched right arm prior to reaching the lovely red fire hydrant that stands in silent sentry should the good people of Wimbledon be in need of extinguishing a house or car fire. Thank you, and thanks for flying D-I airlines, where we tend to do everything twice, everything twice.”