333 Miles by Craig Birk Read Free Book Online Page A

sarcastic. They responded in unison: “Cool.”
     
     
    Interlude Three
    Alex (5)
     
    Alex Reine’s family, which consisted of
father Edward, mother Cynthia, and older sister Samantha, moved a
lot when he was young. Edward was a project manager for a
consulting firm focused on complex computer programming. The
company’s primary client was the military. Most projects lasted
roughly two years. Then it was time to pack up and go. The family
owned a home in Florida, but Alex only lived in it for the first
year of his life. Normally, they resided in rented houses.
    When Alex was five, it was an oceanfront
ranch house on the East side of Oahu, Hawaii. In the backyard,
Edward taught Alex to surf on the days when the waves were not too
large. In Honolulu, on the other side of the H3 tunnel, Alex was
enrolled in a private kindergarten where he was expected to improve
his very simple reading and math skills and hone his abilities to
interact with other children.
    Probably because his family had moved three
times by his fifth birthday, Alex had never had the time to develop
a true best friend like most children had. Still, he was good with
other kids and usually gained acceptance into any group he
chose.
    On the first day of the new school, Cynthia
had worried that little Alex would be upset to leave his mother. On
the contrary, he was so eager to join his new classmates that she
found herself fighting an emotion of rejection.
    Alex had no reason to be afraid. In his brief
life he had always been treated like a king. His parents probably
overcompensated for their guilt at moving so much, and he won over
most strangers by learning how to look cute. With other kids, he
already understood the tactic of gaining acceptance by sharing and
taking an interest in others.
    So, during the first recess at his new
school, Alex did not fret when he found himself playing alone on a
tire swing in the playground. When a new child came to join him
after a few minutes, in this case a larger seven-year-old from the
adjoining elementary school, Alex found it natural to climb off the
tire and offer it to the other child. The bigger kid grabbed the
tire and pulled it back, but did not climb on it. Instead, he
paused, looking at Alex who was watching expectantly, not saying a
word. The other child then threw the tire in Alex’s direction with
as much force as he could muster. There was no mistaking the fact
that the intent was to inflict pain. The tire struck Alex squarely
in the chest, knocking him back a few inches but not down to the
ground.
    Alex took inventory of his body and realized
that he was not meaningfully injured. Unsure what to do, he simply
stared at the other boy, trying to comprehend why he did what he
did.
     
     

Chapter Eight
    Sex
    4:42 p.m.
     
    “ Yeah, you're not hurting it. You're just
kinda gently batting the bunny around, you know what I mean? And
the bunny is scared, Mike, the bunny is scared of you, shivering. .
. . And you got these fucking claws and these fangs, man! And
you're looking at your claws and you're looking at your fangs. And
you're thinking to yourself, you don't know what to do, man. "I
don't know how to kill the bunny." With this you don't know how to
kill the bunny. Do you know what I mean?”
     
    – Trent, Swingers
     
    With Roger sleeping soundly in the back seat,
Temecula was now in the rearview mirror and Superman by
Eminem had replaced Avril on the stereo.
     
    “ Put anthrax on a Tampax
    And slap you till you can’t stand
    Girl you just blew your chance
    Don’t mean to ruin your plans
    But I do know one thing though
    Bitches they come they go”
     
    Alex: “I had a dream last night that I was A.
C. Slater from Saved by the Bell .”
    Gary: “Were you doing it with Jessie
Spano?”
    Alex: “Who?”
    Gary: “You know. Jessie, Elizabeth Berkeley’s
character.”
    Alex: “Oh, right. No. She wasn’t in it.”
    Gary: “What about Screech?”
    Alex: “Was I doing it with Screech?”
    Gary: