Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman Read Free Book Online

so powerfully, the pencils keep breaking. Not just the points, but the pencils themselves. I toss the ruined ones over my shoulder, not allowing for delays.
    “You’re like a mad scientist,” my mother observes.
    I hear her about ten seconds after she says it. It’s too late to respond, so I don’t. I’m too busy to respond anyway. There’s this thing in my head that I have to purge onto the page before it changes the shape of my brain. Before the colorful lines cut into it like a cheese wire. My drawings have lost all sense of form. They are scribbles and suggestions, random, and yet not. I wonder if others will see the things in them that I see. These images have to mean something, don’t they? Why else would they be so intense?Why would that silent voice inside be so adamant about getting them out?
    The magenta pencil breaks. I toss it and pick up vermilion.
    “I don’t like it,” says Mackenzie, passing with a spoonful of peanut butter that she licks like a lollipop. “It’s creepy.”
    “I only draw what’s called for,” I tell her. Then I get a flash of impulsive inspiration; I reach over, dig my thumb into her spoon, and smudge an ocher arc across the page.
    “Mom!” yells Mackenzie. “Caden’s drawing with my peanut butter!”
    To which Mom replies, “Serves you right. You shouldn’t be eating peanut butter before dinner.”
    Still, Mom spares a glance from the kitchen at me and my project. I feel her wave of worry like a patio heater—faint and ineffective, but constant.

29. Some of My Best Friends Are Cirque-ish
    I sit with my friends for lunch. And yet I don’t. That is to say, I’m among them, but I don’t feel with them. Used to be I could easily fit in with whatever friends I was hanging out with. Some people need a clique to make them feel safe. They have this little protective bubble of friends that they rarely venture away from. I was never like that. I could always flow freely from table to table, group to group. The athletes, the brainiacs, the hipsters, the band kids,the skaters. I was always well liked and well accepted by all, and I always managed to fit in like a chameleon. How strange, then, that now I find myself in a clique of one, even when I’m with a group.
    My friends scarf down their lunches, and laugh about something I didn’t hear. It’s not like I’m intentionally zoning out, but somehow I can’t land myself in the conversation. Their laughter feels so far away it’s as if there’s cotton in my ears. It’s been happening more and more. It’s like they’re not even talking English—they’re speaking that weird fake language the clowns speak in Cirque du Soleil. My friends are all conversing in Cirque-ish. Usually I’ll play along. I’ll join in the laughter so I can stay camouflaged and appear to be in step with those around me. But today I’m not in the mood to pretend. My buddy Taylor, who is slightly more observant than the others, notices my absence, and raps me gently on the arm.
    “Hey, earth to Caden Bosch—where are you, man?”
    “In orbit around Uranus,” I tell him, which makes everyone laugh, and it starts a whole round of rude puns that all sound Cirque-ish, because I’ve already checked out again.

30. The Movements of Flies
    While we crewmen do our business, pacing back and forth on deck with no seeming point to the endeavor, the captain stands above us at the helm. Like a preacher, he pontificates his own peculiar brand of wisdom.
    “Count your blessings,” the captain says. “And if you count less than ten, cut off the remaining fingers.”
    I watch the parrot checking in with the crew members one at a time, landing on their shoulders, or perching atop their heads for a few moments before flying off to the next. I wonder what he’s up to.
    “Burn all your bridges,” the captain says. “Preferably before you cross them.”
    The navigator sits on a leaky barrel of yuck that was once full of food, but its stench testifies to