Empire Falls

this girl that Miles would continue to long for well after she was married—–first to this biker, then to two other men—even after he himself was married. When the twirling out in the parking lot finally stopped, it was Miles who felt dizzy .
    When Charlene came back inside to ask if she could get off her shift a half hour early, Roger Sperry nodded to her from behind the counter, and before the restaurant door could slam shut, she was on the motorcycle, which had throbbed back to life in anticipation of her return, and just that quickly Charlene Gardiner and her new fiancé were gone. “You’ll never guess who my mother wants me to ask,” Miles said to Otto. They weren’t looking at each other, but at the space outside the restaurant window .
    “Cindy Whiting?” Otto said, and when Miles looked at him he just shrugged. “Your mom called mine last week. I thought maybe you’d suggested me.”
    Miles closed his eyes and let the humiliation of what his mother had done wash over him .
    “It’s okay,” Otto assured him. “I mean, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Cindy’s actually kind of pretty, don’t you think?”
    To Miles, this seemed completely beside the point. All he could think of was the chant he’d lived with since last spring when he was learning to drive: Go, Roby, go! Go, Roby, go!
    “Plus she’s a nice girl,” Otto said. Which was true, and when Miles didn’t deny it, he added, “Plus she likes you. Better than anybody.”
    “That’s the worst part,” he admitted, meeting his friend’s eye .
    “No. The girl you love just rode off on the back of a motorcycle,” Otto said . “That’s the worst part.”
    “Screw you, Otto,” Miles suggested .
    “Plus we could double,” his friend continued. “Anne wouldn’t mind.” Anne Pacero was his date. “I bet she’d like to get to know Cindy better. It’d be okay.”
    Imagining all of this, Miles had to look down. “What if she thinks I like her or something?”
    “You do like her.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    Now it was Otto’s turn to look down, and Miles tried to think if anyone else his own age had ever suggested doing the right thing because it was the right thing. Under different circumstances, Miles thought, he might’ve been grateful to Otto for risking a moral point of view. Maybe he was grateful even in the present circumstances. What he would have liked to explain to his friend was just how needy and hungry this girl was, how she lived in a dream world, how the smallest kindnesses engendered and sustained her fantasies. But as he struggled to find a way to express this, he saw how close he was to describing his own yearning for Charlene Gardiner, who indeed had ridden off into her future without saying good-bye to him or scooping up the quarter he always left for a tip .
    After dinner that evening, once his brother had gone to bed and Miles had gotten out his homework, Grace came into the dining room where he’d spread his textbooks across the table. “I want you to go to St. Luke’s,” she said .
    A small Catholic college not far from Portland, it was the most costly of the schools he’d applied to. In addition to St. Luke’s he’d sent forms off to the University of New Hampshire and the University of Vermont and, without his mother’s knowledge, the University of Maine. He remained convinced that when the time came, she’d be forced to acknowledge reality. “Mom …,” he began .
    “I went to St. Cat’s this afternoon,” she said .
    Miles sighed deeply. My God, he thought. She’s praying for out-of-state tuition .
    “Father Tom knows people at the college,” she said, reassuring him at least a little. “He thinks with your record there’s a good chance of a scholarship. He said the parish might even be able to help with your books. And it’s where you want to go.”
    What he felt like asking—no, screaming—was, What does wanting have to do with anything? Instead he simply nodded. It was what he wanted .
    “We’ll find the money,” she insisted, taking his hand. “Do you trust me?”
    Is it possible to say no to such a question? “Okay, Mom,” he said, almost too brokenhearted by her faith to speak .
    “Good,” she said. “And now I have a favor to ask of you.”
    And it occurred to him that perhaps wanting something really badly might not always be the most foolish thing a person could do in this world. Because that afternoon when he returned home from the grill, at about the