Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel Read Free Book Online

guess I was worried he would laugh or think Zan was some kind of goofy pet.
    But instead he’d asked if he could hold him. He was very careful when I put Zan in his arms, and Zan seemed to like him—which made me like Tim all the more. Mom liked Tim, but I’m not sure Dad did. I got the feeling he thought Tim wasn’t the kind of kid I should be hanging out with.
    It was another one of those perfect summer nights as we cycled in the direction of the construction site. At the entrance were two other guys, waiting astride their bikes. Tim called out to them, and we pulled off onto the gravel.
    “Hey,” Tim said, “this is Ben.”
    It was the first time I’d met Tim’s friends. Jamie was on his soccer team. He had red hair and a chipped front tooth, and seemed like a good-natured guy. Mike, I wasn’t so sure about. He had scary eyes. They were intelligent, but they stared really hard, and I couldn’t tell what was going on behind them. It didn’t look like there was a lot of sunlight and chirping birds back there. He didn’t talk much.
    “You want to go in?” Tim asked me. Obviously he’d planned this with the other two, and I didn’t want to look like a wimp.
    “Sure,” I said.
    There was a chain across the entrance, but we just hopped off our bikes, ducked under, and wheeled our bikes in a ways, out of sight of the main road.
    The site was how I imagined a battlefield from World War I. All rubble and mud and pools of oily water and lots of metal debris and oil drums and wire. There weren’t any houses going up yet. It looked like they were still working on the underground stuff, because there were big trenches and beside them huge cement cylinders on their sides. They were so big we could walk right through them, barely stooping.
    “These are the storm drains,” Tim explained.
    The massive digging machinery sat crooked on the uneven earth, casting long shadows. In a sci-fi movie it would’ve all come to life and made a grab for us. Mike and Jamie climbedup into one of the excavators and sat in the cabin, pushing at the controls for a bit. After they came down, Mike lit a cigarette and passed it around. I took a puff and held the smoke in my mouth for a second before blowing it out.
    “So you’re the guy with the monkey,” Jamie said.
    “Chimpanzee,” I corrected.
    “What’s the difference?” asked Mike, turning his dark eyes on me.
    “Different animals. Different species.” I might’ve told him that the chimp was the closest ancestor to humans, but I wasn’t sure he’d be interested.
    “You should bring him here,” said Mike, looking around. “He’d go nuts playing out here.”
    “Hmm,” I said. I couldn’t think of a worse idea. All I saw were the sharp things Zan could cut himself on. All the holes and puddles he might fall into.
    Near the big trench and storm drain segments, Mike found an old spray-paint can on the ground. He picked it up, gave it a shake.
    “Check it out,” he said.
    Around the inside of one of the cement cylinders, he sprayed a big circle, then quickly took his lighter and lit it. The flame took right away, licking hungrily all around.
    “Wicked!” said Tim.
    “Mike, you freaking pyro!” said Jamie.
    “Watch this,” Mike said. He stepped back, then took a run and jumped right through the ring of fire, landing in a crouch inside the cement tube. I let out my breath. I’d half expected him to catch fire.
    Inside the tube, he stepped closer to the circle of flame, shook the can, and sprayed some more onto the fire. The aerosol ignited in a long cone.
    Even Tim looked a bit nervous now. “The can’s gonna blow up in your hand!” he said.
    But Mike just laughed and fed the fire some more. I imagined an explosion. I imagined him aflame, screaming. He took a few steps back, then jumped on out.
    “Easy,” he said, then looked at me. “You go.”
    I was about to say no, but for some reason I didn’t. Back in Toronto I would’ve said no. But maybe here I