No Parking at the End Times by Bryan Bliss Read Free Book Online Page A

middle of the night and walk to Aaron’s room. I’d turn on the lights and check to make sure he was still close.
    As we got older, I wasn’t allowed to come into his room anymore. First he put up signs, warnings to stay out—that sort of thing. A few years later it was implicit. He expected the space, and I gave it to him. I used to tell him I couldn’t get into his room even if I wanted to. The place was always a pit; that’s what Mom would say. But sometimes I’d still wake up and hear him moving around his room. That was enough. Now all I have to do is turn my head and he’s there, usually with his earbuds in, staring out the window.
    His sleeping bag is spread across the backseat. Clothes are scattered across the floor, along with a few books. I know he’s probably going to be mad, but I get out of my seat and, dodging the paper bags littered on the floor, walk quietly to the back of the van.
    When I touch where his shoulder should be, it’s too soft.
    No.
    He’s watching right now, I tell myself—this is one of his jokes, like throwing me in the ocean. I don’t want him to have broken his promise. But when I pull back the sleepingbag, all I find is a sweater and a few shirts manipulated to look like his body.
    I look from the sleeping bag to the clothes to the back door. The surge of anger is so awful and alive inside me I could scream. And maybe I should. Maybe I should yell as loud as I can, waking up Mom and Dad—this whole block—because then we’d just have to deal with it. We’d wait here until Aaron got back and we’d finally have a real discussion about everything that’s happening. Everything that’s happened.
    Loyalty is the only thing that keeps me quiet. That and the satisfaction I’ll feel when he comes back into the van and finds me, awake and angry. I rework his sleeping bag into a body and swivel my captain’s chair so it faces the rear of the van—I’ll be the first thing he sees when he sneaks back in.
    But as I sit there, it doesn’t seem like enough.
    When I stand up, I tell myself I’m just going to sit in the backseat—to scare him even more, maybe. But when I get to there, all I can think about is the mock body inside his sleeping bag and how much I want to show him that he isn’t the only person who wants to run away.
    I slowly unpeel the duct tape and silently remove thecardboard from the window, my heart running crazy in my chest. From there it’s easy to unbind the cord and open the door. As it swings open, I throw a look at Dad, half expecting him to spring from his seat. Even my breathing seems too loud. But he and Mom are both still passed out in the front seat as I lower myself onto the street.
    I have no plan, and at first I think I’ll just wait in one of the shadows that fill the corners of the street. But the cold cuts through my sweatshirt, so I start walking—only to the end of the block, I tell myself. Streetlights spill onto the sidewalk every few feet like yellow puddles. The street is empty, but I still move cautiously because who knows what’s hiding ahead, anywhere.
    As I turn the first corner, things become familiar. That one bike shop. The fast food restaurant on the corner. Ahead, I see the entrance to the park.
    Even as I walk, I can’t stop myself from shivering. I should go get my jacket, but I’m afraid I’ll wake up Mom and Dad. Or maybe I’m afraid that if I go back inside the van, I won’t have the nerve to leave again. So I start to jog, slowly at first. It doesn’t take long to get warm, and soon my heart is like one of those cars that passes in the night,booming and throbbing deeply as I push forward.
    I should turn left, shorten my route to just a block. But my momentum takes me up and down the nameless streets; left, right, and then left again. I let the air struggle down my throat and into my ragged lungs. I’ll probably pay for running twice in one day when I wake up and my legs are stiff like boards. Right now, though,