A Ghost of a Chance by Minnette Meador Read Free Book Online Page B

shoulders.
    When he reached Jack, Keenan grabbed him by the back of his shirt, twisted his hands in the fabric until Jack’s arms were pulled almost straight back, and lifted him off his feet. The smell of cheap gin, cigarettes, and sweat added fodder to his anger.
    Jack countered the action by bringing his head back and hitting Keenan hard on the collarbone. It hurt like hell and Keenan let go. When Jack turned around with a solid right, Keenan ducked, but not very well. The fist caught him squarely on the side of the face, and he went flying. He hit the wall at full speed, but fortunately, his backpack took the brunt of the impact.
    Jack didn’t wait for him to catch his breath. He charged at young Keenan with fists curled, teeth bared, and a roar of alcoholic rage. The booze was making Jack sloppy or he would have figured out what Keenan would do next. When Jack was almost on top of him, Keenan lifted both of his long legs from the ground and caught Jack right in the stomach. Jack doubled over Keenan’s feet and Keenan pushed with all his might. Jack’s body hit the far wall at full impact. He crumpled into a heap on the floor groaning.
    Keenan got up off the carpet and bent over to get air back into his lungs. His mother jumped up and for the first time in years, he thought she was going to hug him. He was wrong.
    When his mother reached him, she hauled off and slapped him across the face. “You son of a bitch! You hurt him!” The gin-drenched words permeated every inch of his awareness and cut his heart in half. She ran to her drunken husband and cooed over his misfortune.
    Keenan didn’t stay. He pulled the front door open with such force he heard glass break on the wall behind it. He didn’t care. Leaving the door open, Keenan disappeared into the night.
    Why that particular recollection happened to snap into his mind at that moment was beyond him.
    He had had an entire night to get his tangled nerves to behave, but it was no good; he just couldn’t get it out of his head and had been too exhausted to stay at home and confront his broken bedroom anymore. Keenan had finally stumbled to the Bagdad Theater Saturday afternoon for popcorn and a micro-brew, his favorite comfort food. But the movie was as listless and depressing as his mood, so he left early.
    As he passed the yuppie shops on his way home from the theater, the memory of Jack stood up between his ears like a marauding bear. It made his stomach cringe and usually he pushed it down as quickly as it came up, but now it was stark against the inside of his eyelids. He forced his mind to think instead about what happened later that night.
    He was so enraged, young Keenan started to walk. The pounding of the sidewalk was all he was aware of for hours. It barely registered, but as he moved along, each streetlight he passed went dark, some in a shower of sparks. Something wrong with the electricity, maybe, but he didn’t care; heartsick and numb, Keenan finally decided to let his feet take him wherever they wanted to go. Where he ended up startled him at first, but it eventually made a kind of sense.
    Laurelhurst Park was an oasis tucked in the middle of southeast Portland. Thirty acres of lush stands of green, expanses of well-tended lawns, and a huge pond that housed hundreds of swans, geese, and ducks, the park had been a mainstay of Keenan’s childhood. His best memories were of chasing the squawking birds and throwing pieces of stale bread to feed them.
    His feet apparently knew something he didn’t because when they finally stopped it was at the edge of that same pond.
    Keenan figured it must have been midnight. Low clouds had snuck in while he walked, obscuring the stars, the moon, and anything else that might have been in the sky that night. He had never been to the park this late; it was pitch black except for the far away lights on the street that surrounded it.
    Apparently, the birds had all gone to bed because there wasn’t a sound except the