Broken Things by G. S. Wright Read Free Book Online

still looked a little gray. The
ringing in his ears seemed to get unbearably loud. He crawled back into his
tent and closed his eyes and waited for it to pass.
    I don’t want to be sick, he thought, what’s wrong
with me? What little he knew only came from conversations that he
overheard. His parents had spoken of it frequently over the last month, though
never to him. Josh only received reassurances. At first, the conversations were
about him. They worried, wondering how bad the damage was and how much he could
heal (and if he ever pressed, that’s what they’d tell him: “You’ll be fine.”).
    He knew that his head didn’t work right since the accident.
He had frequent headaches, and once had a brief nosebleed. The noise in his
head varied in volume. Sometimes it would get so loud he thought his head would
split, while at other times it become so soft that he could hardly hear it. He
realized rather fast that the more physical he got the louder the noise, as
though it strained whatever parts were going bad in his head. Why hadn’t his
dad just let the tech replace them?
    There were benefits. For a while he got new things to keep
him entertained, as they tried to help him keep his mind off of the condition.
He didn’t care. It just was, like needing to breathe and eat, and sometimes he
could use it to get a new toy or video game. They let him watch TV all day long
if he wanted to. He just had to stay out of the way. It would’ve been nice to
replace the bike, but the look in his dad’s eyes made him think twice about
bringing that up.
    As the day went on he felt better, enough so that he felt he
could leave the tent. But the heat of the day made it feel like it was an oven.
Sometimes a breeze would come up strong enough to shake the tent, but it didn’t
provide any comfort from the sun. In the daylight, the only noise beyond the
wind and the water were the birds and bugs, and so many different kinds! He saw
beetles larger than anything they had back at home, in every different color.
    The state of the site filled him with despair. If his
parents didn’t come back soon he would starve to death! Or worse, whatever had
eaten all of his food would come back looking for more and eat him! Why would
they leave him alone? They knew he was broken. It wasn’t fair. They were
wasting their time trying to teach him some lesson that made no sense. The
accident hadn’t been his fault. And he didn’t care if they never bought him
another stupid bike. Maybe they wanted him to be afraid. If that was the case,
he wouldn’t let them know. They would never do this to him again. They’d be
lucky to drag him to the mall.
    A sudden piercing cry from above made him to look up. High
in the sky an eagle soared, not flapping his wings yet staying aloft as though
it were the most effortless thing in the world. He’d never seen an eagle
before. It soared so high he couldn’t make it out clearly, despite being the
largest bird he’d ever seen. It seemed so much more powerful than other birds,
flying beyond all of the others, as though removed from their lesser concerns.
    The eagle could probably see where his parents were, if they
were down the road. It could probably see the city! If only he could get that
high! He needed to climb a mountain. Yet the very thought of climbing made his
mind spin again. He watched the eagle until it too, like his parents,
disappeared beyond the mountains.
     
    4
     
    Three days later Josh’s scraps of food ran out. Dirt and
grime filled the tent from his entering and exiting, and it drew in every
conceivable bug, when unfortunately he’d left the zipper on the flaps open.
Earwigs hid under everything. He’d decided that if his parents weren’t coming
back he would go out to find them. He resolutely stood by his decision that they
wouldn’t have abandoned him. Therefore they had to be in trouble. They must’ve
driven off the edge of the road, or crashed into a tree, or something. It was
the only