Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos Read Free Book Online Page B

glass window where the cadaver’s face could be viewed. The idea was you were buried with all your favorite things and in a thousand years a relative would dig you up and sift through your rotted remains and stuff. It was kind of a disgusting thought.
    But it wasn’t disgusting to her. “I’m going to take one to school for show-and-tell,” she said. “How much will you give me if I ask old Principal Knox to try it on for size?”
    She turned to me for an offer. But I couldn’t say anything because the subject of death made me pale and feel cold except for the very tip of my nose, which was heating up like a match head about to combust. I started to back away from her.
    She sensed my fear and edged even closer to me. “I think coffins are old-fashioned,” she remarked, and made a disapproving face. “I’d rather be cremated and have my ashes blasted into orbit like Sputnik and go beeping around the planet for all of eternity. Now that would be cool. But Dad doesn’t like cremation because he doesn’t make any money at it except for what it costs him to burn people to a crisp and put them in a Mason jar.”
    By then I had backpedaled so far I was pressed against a heavy purple velvet curtain that divided the back of the viewing room from the front.
    “You’re afraid of dead people,” she suddenly said. “Aren’t you?”
    Before I could deny that accusation she reached out with her short muscular arm and grabbed my shirt. “Come on,” she ordered, and with her other hand she pulled the center of the curtain to one side. “You need to see your first dead person and then you won’t be afraid anymore.”
    I wasn’t sure about that theory. I quickly lizard-licked my upper lip but didn’t taste any blood. So far I hadn’t humiliated myself, but I knew the worst was still to come.
    On the other side of the curtain was a closed coffin displayed on a polished wood platform. Without pausing she went up and with both hands lifted the lid. She propped the lid on a metal rod as if she were propping open a car hood. There was a dead old man in there. He was dressed in a white suit and his face was tinted with flesh-colored makeup. I stared at him. His eyes were a tiny bit open, like an alligator peeking back at me.
    Bunny suddenly grabbed my arm. “Touch his hand,” she said, and she turned and slapped him hard on his hand. “Touch it—not scary at all!” she proclaimed.
    My hand was paralyzed. I probably looked more dead than he did. I couldn’t touch him.
    “Come on, you wimp,” she said, and jerked my hand forward and pressed it against the dead man’s neck as if I were going to take his pulse. But there was no pulse. His neck was hard as a fence post, and my legs wobbled and I had to grip the edge of the coffin with my other hand to keep from tilting over to one side. By then the blood was dripping off my chin and onto the white satin lining inside the coffin. I turned and with my last bit of strength I ran out of the room and down the airless hallway and out their front door. I could hear her laughing behind me as the blood swept back across my cheeks and all the way to my ears, like rain streaking over a windshield.
    *   *   *
     
    When I arrived at the baseball diamond Bunny and the other four players on our small team were already practicing. They were hitting ground balls to each other and trying to field them.
    When Bunny saw me she broke away from the others and threw a fastball directly at my head. “What took you so long?” she asked, with a bit of anger in her voice.
    I caught it. “Trouble,” I replied, and threw it back at her chunky feet.
    “What kind of trouble?” she asked, fielding the ball and bouncing a hard grounder back at me.
    I picked it cleanly. “I cut down Mom’s corn crop.” Even saying that made me wince. I threw her a grounder with some spin on it.
    She scooped it up, turned, and threw me a fly ball. “Why’d you do that?” she asked.
    I made a basket catch