Fragile Beasts by Tawni O’Dell Read Free Book Online Page B

decide if he wants to bawl or puke.
    “Yeah, he was,” he tells Krystal while staring straight at Mom with tears glittering in his eyes. “And Mom’s a slut. One big happy family.”
    I hear Mom gasp, but we’ve already turned to go again, and this time we won’t be coming back.
    I want to run. I feel like if I took off and started right now I could run for the rest of my life. Never stop. Never talk to anyone. Never worry about having a home. Never care about anything except the weather.
    People are staring at me. I try not to catch anybody’s eye, but I can’t help noticing Shelby. I let her catch up to me.
    “You heard all that?” I ask her.
    She nods.
    “I wasn’t spying. I swear. I was just standing there.”
    “It’s okay. Pretty embarrassing, though.”
    She frowns.
    “You should hang out with my family sometime.”
    I study her face to make sure she’s serious. I can’t imagine anything in her life being less than perfect.
    “Do you think Klint’s serious? Do you think he’d really drop out of school and run away?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Before today I would have said definitely not. I couldn’t imagine Klint jeopardizing his golden future for any reason, but now I realize there’s something inside him that’s just as powerful as his desire to play ball and that’s his hatred for Mom.
    “Would you go with him?” she asks.
    “I couldn’t let him go by himself.”
    She nods slowly.
    “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I tell her. “No one around here’s gonna take us in. Who wants two instant kids who aren’t even little and cute anymore? And who has the room or the money to feed us? You’ve never seen Klint eat. And even if someone wanted to do it, they’d probably have to fight Mom.”
    “Kyle!” Bill shouts at me.
    “I gotta go.”
    “Okay.”
    She gives me a hug and walks away. She looked really sad. I want to believe it’s because she might miss me—not because her sense of justice has been offended or, worse yet, because she might miss Klint—but I don’t dare.
    A glint of silver catches my eye mixed in with the cigarette butts and gravel next to the curb. I bend down and check it out. It’s Krystal’s Barbie shoe.
    I pick it up and put it back in my pocket.
    Bill and Klint are waiting for me inside the long black funeral car. As we’re driving away I hear the sound of high heels clattering on the sidewalk, and I lean out of the open window and look behind us.
    Shelby’s hurrying after the car.
    “Kyle,” she calls out breathlessly, smiling and waving. “I’ll call you tomorrow! I have a great idea!”

Candace Jack
CHAPTER THREE
    S helby has just come to me with the most ridiculous idea.
    Not only was the entire scheme absurd and indecent (I call it a scheme because that’s what it sounds like to me, a scheme cooked up between two lovesick teenagers), but she seemed to feel I couldn’t possibly say no, that it wasn’t really a request at all but one of those “done deals” I’ve heard her discuss with her friends usually pertaining to romantic couplings and uncouplings or the buying of concert tickets.
    I told her it was completely out of the question and she responded with such a look of wounded incredulity that I wondered for a moment if we were discussing the same thing. Her shock quickly turned to anger, and she accused me of never doing anything nice for anyone.
    This simply isn’t true. I do many things for people, although I detest the word
nice
. I hate anything vague. I prefer to say I sometimes provide monetary assistance where needed and deserved, and I do it discreetly, so I may not seem nice to the general public, but I’ve never cared one iota for the general public’s opinion.
    What upset me most about her outburst was the underlying message that what she wanted from me was so commonplace that I would have to be a monster to refuse. Imagine asking a seventy-six-year-old single woman to provide a home for two teenage boys she’s