Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel Read Free Book Online Page B

said.
    “It’s okay,” he mumbled.
    Dad just walked away, like he was too disgusted by the whole thing to say any more. I went out to Tim and took my bike. Mom left us alone.
    “So what happened?” I asked. “Anyone going to jail?”
    Tim gave me a little grin. “Nah. We just ran off. That guy didn’t even chase us. He just stood there shouting. Said if he ever saw us again, there’d be big trouble. Is your dad gonna call my dad?”
    “I doubt it.” He’d never done anything like that before. “Good. I should get home. See you.” “See you. Thanks.”
    That night, I couldn’t sleep. My mind was still swirling with all that had happened. Leaping through rings of flame like some circus performer. Running for my life through a construction site. Going to Windermere. Going to Windermere with Jennifer Godwin.
    Later, I heard Mom and Dad talking from their bedroom. I heard my name a few times, so I crept closer to my door to listen.
    “Can we even afford it?” Mom was saying. “Oh, sure,” said Dad. “On my new salary, that’s not a problem.”
    “I just don’t see why it’s necessary,” Mom said. “Even after tonight?” Dad said.
    “He’s a thirteen-year-old boy. You never did foolish things when you were that age?”
    “You know it’s not just that,” Dad said. “I don’t want a repeat of last year. And I think he’d benefit from a more disciplined school environment.”
    Mom’s voice was angry. “The way you talk about him sometimes. He’s a good boy, Richard.”
    “I know he is. But he also needs a good kick in the pants. I want him with the right sort of kids, and I want him to start taking school more seriously. Windermere will sort him out.”
    The next morning, Mom and I were in the kitchen, feeding Zan mashed-up banana in his high chair. I sat beside him, spooning it into his mouth. He loved banana. He loved pretty much everything we fed him—hot cereals and mashed vegetables and Jell-O.
    “Eat,” I said, and made the sign, touching the tips of my fingers to my mouth. “Zan eats.”
    Not that he needed any encouragement. His mouth would open for more even before I’d loaded up the spoon. If I was taking too long he’d make an impatient high-pitched bark.
    He was tiny in his high chair, much smaller than a human baby of the same age. His little head was barely above the tray, but his coffee-coloured eyes were, as always, incredibly alert and eager.
    So far Zan hadn’t made any signs, but he was sure good at imitating us. When I widened my eyes, he widened his. IfI stuck out my tongue, he did the same. And if I patted my head, he sometimes patted his own.
    “Drink?” Mom said when he was done his food. She made the sign, touching her thumb to her lips. Zan’s hands shot out, as if to hold a bottle, even though Mom hadn’t shown it to him yet.
    “He certainly understands a lot of things,” said Mom, screwing on the top of the bottle and bringing it over. She took Zan out of the high chair and held him as he drank. He loved being close to people, and was still almost always attached to one of us.
    “In the wild,” Mom said to me, “the babies stay with their mothers for four or five years. They get carried everywhere for the first year or so.”
    “You know way more about chimps than Dad,” I said.
    She had piles of books everywhere, by people like Jane Goodall, who studied chimps in the wild. I read bits of them sometimes. It was really interesting.
    “Well, Dad’s been busy designing the whole experiment, but someone has to learn about them as animals.”
    Dad was in charge of Project Zan, but Mom was in charge of actually taking care of him. Which was perfect, because Mom’s thesis was about cross-fostering. That’s what they called it when you raised one species as a different one. There were lots of cases of kittens growing up thinking they were dogs, or chicks identifying more closely with sheep than other chickens. Zan was being cross-fostered as a human, and