Gone, Gone, Gone by Hannah Moskowitz Read Free Book Online

morning, so yeah, I’m not really open to the idea of that changing any more than I’m open to the idea that I’ll stand up and there won’t be floor. Is that a problem? I can’t be the only one who feels this way. I think that’s consciousness, and I think it might be the thing that keeps me from being a sociopath.
    “You won’t get shot,” he says. “It’s a numbers game.”
    Right now my heartbeat’s all out of whack trying to thrum out, Why did you kiss me and why won’t you do it again? But I can’t ask it, I can’t.
    Anyway, by the time we get out of class, someone else has been killed. A twenty-five-year-old woman was pumping gas, and someone shot her in the head. At long range, like all the others.
    I’m so mad. I’m just mad about everything. I feel like this proves Lio right or wrong but I don’t even know what his damn point is, and in fifth period he barely even looks at me. He just sits there and doodles a lot.
     
    Mompicks me up after school and there’s Kremlin in the backseat, pounding her paws against the leather, and I cuddle that dog so hard that I’m worried I’m going to rub all her fur off or something, and she licks my face over and over, and she smells funny but I don’t even care.
    “The lady who found her was excited to get rid of her, I think,” Mom says. “God, she’s a loud one. I think your dad would have preferred she stayed lost.”
    I cover Kremlin’s ears.
    Usually, when I take one of the pets out somewhere by himself—like to the vet, or maybe if he’s been sad, out on a special walk—we’re greeted by a whole host of jealous, curious animals as soon as we come back through the front door. It’s weird when only Jupiter and the two cats run up to sniff Kremlin’s legs. It makes it very hard to be happy, when I think that tonight I will be walking so many fewer dogs than I am supposed to.
    Then Todd comes down from upstairs and gives me this huge hug. I say, “Hey,” because this is a little weird.
    “I’m glad you’re okay,” he says.
    It’s like no one would have told him if I’d died at school or something. I say, “What?”
    “You didn’t hear about the shootings?”
    “Oh, right, I mean, I heard about them, but I wasn’t thinking about them or something.” I want to tell him thatthe chances are way better that I’d died in a car wreck with Mom on the way home, but I don’t mind when Todd likes me, even though I sometimes feel like I’m just his good deed for the day.
    Dad finally comes home with a stack of papers, rubbing the headache between his eyes. Parents are calling him like crazy, he says, all of them demanding that he promise their kids will be safe, like that’s something Dad can tell them.
    We eat a late dinner, and I should do my homework but I don’t, and I should sleep but I don’t, and while we’re sitting around chewing on our cold, gummy pizza, a man is killed crossing the street in Washington, D.C. Wha-pam, long-range bullet, dead body.
    I email the boy I shouldn’t instead of the boy I should. Because there is nothing from Cody in my inbox. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
    Lio—
    I don’t know why you have to be a jackass all the time. It didn’t used to be like this.
    Craig
    _________________________
    Craig—
    We didn’tused to know each other. I’m a jackass sometimes. It’s not really all the time. You’ll deal.
    Lio
    _________________________
    Lio—
    I wish you would call me.
    I wish you talked.
    You don’t think anyone’s going to shoot an animal, right?
    Craiger
     
    God, the least Lio could do is answer this one, let me know that the animals are safe, even though why do I trust him to know when I don’t trust my dad to know about his students? The animals aren’t Lio’s job. They have nothing to do with Lio.

LIO
    I’M ABOUT TO ANSWER CRAIG’S EMAIL WHEN DAD comes in. He wants to chat. That’s sort of his thing. Our thing. Though my part is mostly listening.
    I’m his only son. It’s stupid to