After Dakota by Kevin Sharp Read Free Book Online

Mom doesn’t want stuff like that in the house,” Bryce says. “She’ll have a stroke if she sees them.”
    “She’s not gonna see them.” Claire flips a card, some picture of a castle getting hit by lightning. “What’s up?”
    “What’s up with you? You, like, live in here these days.” He stands with his back to the doll case. Too many eyes on him, too many movies where dolls come to life and kill.
    Flip goes another card: a group of people battling with long sticks. “Maybe I don’t feel like being social. You should be happy.”
    “Can you tell my fortune?” Bryce asks.
    “I don’t know how they work.”
    Groping for something to say, he goes with, “Would you rather be the teacher with Mom or Dad in class tonight?” Their parents are dividing up the two schedules; their dad will sit in the rooms and not saying anything, while their mom will ask a hundred questions and take notes.
    “Duh, that’s easy,” Claire answers. Flip: Adam & Eve with some kind of angel between them. “By the way, our school sucks.”
    “It’s only been a week. Freshman year was shitty for me too.”
    “‘Once a Thunderbird, always a Thunderbird.’”
    “Made any friends yet?” he asks.
    “I’ve made an enemy – this girl Isabel Arnold.”
    “That’s Hannah Arnold’s little sister. Hannah thinks she’s queen of everything. Probably be homecoming queen, to make it official.”
    Hannah is also one of the Pretty People, who should have their own campus so they don’t have to lower themselves to interact with ordinary mortals or park their new cars among the junk heaps that litter the lot.
    Claire turns over the final card: people admiring a rainbow of goblets. Her bed is a mosaic.
    “Where’d you get those, anyway?” Bryce asks.
    “Did you come up here to bother me because you’re filling in for Mom and Dad?”
    “I came to… I don’t know. See if everything’s ok.”
    She puts on her cheesiest smile, the one he knows better than to question.
    “Cool. I’ll leave you alone then.”
    “What d’you think you’ll be doing next year?” she asks before he can take a step.
    He shrugs. The opening chords of “Jessie’s Girl” start up.
    “The cards tell me you’ll be going to UNM and still living here.” She waves her hand over them like a wizard.
    “Chyeah, right. No way.”
    “Then you’ll inherit the house when Mom and Dad die, and raise your own family here. Your son can live in the basement.”
    “Good grief, how did I get you for a sister?” In the process of looking anywhere but at the doll case, he sees the newspaper clipping on Claire’s desk. “Why did you cut out Dakota’s obituary?” The black and white photo smiles out at him, the same one from the yearbook and the funeral, the version of her frozen in people’s memories.
    “Cuz I wanted to. Weren’t you leaving?”
    He’s halfway out the door when she says, almost drowned out by the music, “These were her cards.”
    “Wait, really?”
    “Mr. Vanzant gave ‘em to me. And her old shoes, too. Don’t tell, ok?”
    He nods, closes the door behind him. Across the hall, his old Marvel Comics stickers stand guard on the door to the new guest/sewing/general crap room.
    Later, after his homework is done and the open house debrief finished (his dad sat in on most of Bryce’s classes, thankfully), Bryce lies in bed and listens to the chirping night outside his little window. He thinks about Dakota, wonders what she’d be doing at the moment if she hadn’t gotten on that plane. Probably partying at college, maybe drunk, with guys hanging all over her. Will college really be just one big bash? And if so, why isn’t he excited about going?
    The world might not even be here then if the Russians push the nuclear button. All those practice drills they’ve had at school can’t have been for no reason.
    He floats in the netherworld between sleep and wakefulness when she comes to him. In his old bedroom, the smell of Juicy Fruit