Light Lifting by Alexander Macleod Read Free Book Online

the change in perspective, but sometimes, especially when you’re in a foreign city, you can get yourself pretty disoriented and lost. Then you have to slow down and look around and try and locate a recognizable landmark before you can be sure you’re on the right track.
    Burner and I fell into a nice rhythm right away and our feet clipped along almost in unison. We went back past all those houses where nobody cared and it felt fine and comfortable. Our breathing was the only conversation and it said that we were both relaxed and taking it easy. Some of the neighbourhood kids were still out shooting baskets in their driveways and practicing tricks with their skateboards.
    We just floated down those anonymous sidewalks and carved our way though the maze of minivans and garbage cans. We made a turn and were just about to head back to the stadium when a bunch of kids came streaking past us on their bikes. There were four or five of them, a couple boys and a couple girls, probably between the ages of seven and nine. Real kids, not yet teenagers. One of the boys almost hit us as he went by and another one kept trying to jump his BMX up and down over the driveway cut-outs of the curb. There was a girl on a My Little Pony bike. She had multi-coloured beads on all her spokes and red and white streamers trailing back from her handlebars. Her hair was wispy and blonde. As she came by, she turned around and yelled “I’m faster than you are.” She sort of sang it in a mean, bratty way, using the same up-and-down teasing music that accompanies every “nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.”
    â€œYou can’t catch me,” she said and she stuck her tongue out and pedalled harder. Her pink shoes swivelled around in circles.
    One of the boys, a kid wearing a tough-looking camouflage T-shirt, zipped around us and swerved in tight to cut me off. As he pulled away, he shot us the finger and said “Nice tights, loser.”
    I glanced over at Burner and said “Let it go,” but it was too late. His face was tightening up and that angry stare was coming back into his eyes. He wasn’t looking at me.
    â€œHey,” he yelled and you could feel the edges hardening around that one little syllable. He pulled ahead of me and started tracking them down. I was caught unprepared and a step behind and I couldn’t figure out how we had managed to arrive at this point. Burner was charging again and the kids were running. They didn’t know. There was no way on earth they could have known. The little girl was pedalling as fast as she could and there was this strange, high-pitched, wheezing sound coming out of her, but there was nothing she could do. Burner had already closed the gap and his hand was already there, reaching out for the thin strands of her hair. It all disintegrated after that. He must have been a foot taller than the oldest one.

Wonder About Parents
    L ice. The third week. Head checks in the morning and head checks at night after the baths. You need to go slowly. A separate bath for every person. New water. Fresh pillow cases every night. New sheets. New blankets. The washing machine is going to die. Hats and T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts. Brushes and combs and hair elastics. Water boiling in the kettle. Everything that touches us needs to be scalded.
    What to look for. The eggs, nits, stuck to the shaft, close to the scalp. Dark if they’re fresh, translucent if they’ve already hatched. A seven-day gestation cycle. The nymphs, freshly born, almost impossible to spot without experience. You learn to see. A dot that shouldn’t be there, smaller than a comma or a freckle, moving, but not mature enough to reproduce. Seven more days to reach full growth. The adults are grey and black, size of a poppy seed. They hate the light and run from it, down the part in a child’s hair. Wingless, flightless, they crawl from head to head. One mature louse can lay ten eggs a day, one hundred