Becoming Chloe by Catherine Ryan Hyde Read Free Book Online Page A

you messed it up. Damn you, Chlo.
    He has one of her hands twisted behind her back now, and one arm across her collarbone.
    I just made a huge mistake. Because if I hadn’t stopped, if I had kept running, he wouldn’t have known she was anything to me. He would have nothing. Now he has everything. Now the whole thing just flipped over. It seems shocking to think I could lose a battle in this incredible coat. How can I look this great and lose?
    “Friend of yours?” he asks. He’s barely able to say it, he’s so out of breath. I resent people who can afford to get out of shape like that.
    Then Chloe does what I could have predicted Chloe would do. She bites him. Sinks her teeth into his arm and doesn’t let go. I am here to testify: Chloe bites hard. Nobody wants to know how hard Chloe bites if she gets it in her head to. Nobody deserves to find out.
    The guy screams, spins her away from him. Slaps her hard across the face.
    That’s when I know I have to hurt him.
    They’re deep into the alley now, Chloe kind of pulling him along. He’s got hold of her wrist and he’s twisting it, and he has his back turned to me. For one split second of fatal mistake he abuses Chloe and turns his back on me all in the same breath.
    Funny how we do things before there’s even time to think how it will turn out. I run back in.
    There are garbage cans in the alley, so I go to pick one up.
    That’s all it’s going to be. I’m just going to bash him in the head with a can and go on my way. I think it’ll be empty, or filled with something light. Well, truthfully, I don’t think. My brain is all black and anyway there’s no time.
    The can I grab is like fifteen times heavier than I expected.
    God only knows what’s in it, but I pick it up anyway. I have so much adrenaline, I can actually lift this thing. I have so much adrenaline that when I feel the muscles pulling in my armpits, down my rib cage, it seems like something unimportant happening far away. As it comes down on his head I know—before it even hits him—that it will probably break his neck. Something about the angle and the weight. I see that coming. But now it’s gravity, and you can’t stop gravity.
    As he’s lying facedown in the alley I look down and think, It was about Chloe. Not the coat. I wouldn’t do that for a coat.
    I don’t know what I did to the guy. I probably never will.
    Maybe he’ll wake up with a hell of a headache. Maybe he’ll be in a wheelchair all his life, moving it around by blowing into a tube. Maybe I wasted him right on the spot. I just know I didn’t do it for the coat.
    I grab Chloe’s hand and we run away. When we turn out onto the street I slow us down to a normal walk. “Just walk,” I say. “Just act like everything’s normal.”
    We walk block after block, saying nothing. We cross against lights. Stop traffic. Ignore the honking, the flipped fingers.
    About a half mile from home Chloe says, “That got bad, Jordy.”
    “I know. I’m sorry.”
    “Why do things get really bad like that?”
    “Chlo,” I say, “I’ll be goddamned if I know.”
    ❃ ❃ ❃
    I leave Chloe and the coat in the cellar and go close the bank account. Take all the money back to the cellar in my sock. We never go into this cellar by daylight, but it doesn’t seem to matter today, because we’ll never come back here again. We roll our stuff into the blankets and tie them up tight. We sit with our backs up against the wall, waiting for dark to come.
    “This is your lucky day, Chlo.”
    “It is? Why?”
    “Because you always wanted to get out of the city.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “I don’t know. But I promise you we’ll have either a lawn, some bushes, or a tree.”
    “Wow. That’s pretty lucky.”
    I can’t imagine I’ll sleep while we’re sitting there waiting to go. In fact, I can’t imagine I’ll ever sleep again. I think I’ll just sit up for the rest of my life, my eyes getting redder and redder, staring off into