Strangers at the Feast by Jennifer Vanderbes Read Free Book Online Page A

eyelashes fluttered.
    Ginny nestled her head against Priya’s chest and listened to the thud of her heart.
    My daughter.

KIJO
    They were running late, and Kijo was pissed. He’d been standing on the deserted corner of Merrell and Edison almost an hour, his hands cold as ice, when Spider finally pulled up in the Diamond Diagnostics van. Kijo jiggled the familiar rusty door handle and threw his duffel in the back, then squeezed himself into the passenger seat.
    “You suddenly forget where the projects are?”
    “You gonna sulk all day?”
    Kijo had been planning this for weeks. All Spider had to do was show up on time. Kijo had the map, the supplies. Today was their one chance.
    “I told you this is big,” he said.
    “I’m a force of nature, Kij, to be sure. But traffic’s traffic.”
    In the quiet of the blue van they looked each other over. They hadn’t discussed what to wear, but Kijo now realized they had both put on special clothing. Spider, who once wore a red leather coat he’d bought at Goodwill for a whole week until he discovered it was for women, was draped in a gray hooded track sweatshirt. Kijo had on a dark turtleneck and black corduroys. Nothing distinctive. Nothing memorable.
    Spider gripped the steering wheel with his black leather gloves and hit the gas. In the side mirror Kijo watched the low brick buildings of Vidal Court fade into the distance. Kijo had imagined his departure differently. That morning, he’d felt the urge to tell everyone “I’m a man of action. Nobody messes with me.” He wanted people to gatherand watch him drive away like townspeople in Westerns did as the cowboy kicked his horse and galloped off. But the stoops had been empty, the parking lot quiet, and his brief vision of heroism was lost in the solitude of the gray morning; as usual, no one much cared what he was doing.
    Kijo dangled his arm out the window, the November air bathing his face. The windows were rolled down to clear out the stench of all the blood and piss Uncle Clarence had spent twenty years hauling up the interstate. Spider’s uncle Clarence had delivered specimens for Diamond Diagnostics, supplying replacement specimens for a certain price. More times than Kijo cared to remember, hopping a ride to the movies he and Spider heard Uncle Clarence unzip himself in the back, piss rattling into a plastic cup.
    But Clarence had died a month earlier and the van now belonged to Spider. From the rearview mirror hung a mop of dirty shoelaces from track races Spider had won. A half-eaten pizza—Spider’s “breakfast of champions”—sat on the dashboard. It was an old van, the kind with seats that didn’t budge, and Kijo’s knees pressed against the glove compartment. He’d never been jealous of Spider, but he now wished he had a van of his own. He’d recently come to understand that for a man to have any peace, he had to command a space: boat captains, pilots, bartenders, gas station owners, fathers—they said how things were done on their turf. Kijo had just turned seventeen.
    His birthday had gotten him thinking on the future. Kijo thought it would make sense to someday open a grocery. Put his favorite video games in the back—Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, the old-school ones, because he believed history gave a place class. He’d set the hours, the rules: no barefeet, no radios, don’t even think about coming in here without your shirt, no telling the same dumb-ass long-winded story twice! He’d give kids free Atomic FireBalls so they wouldn’t come back waving a gun. He’d call it Kijo’s. But to the people working there, he’d be Mr. Jackson.
    Kijo wasn’t superstitious, especially not about wishes, since he’dswiped so many coins from wishing ponds over the years. But when he’d blown out the candles on the cake Grandma Rose had made and wished for his grocery store, he had a bad feeling in his gut. Like he should have wished for something noble, like Grandma Rose’s health, or a safe place for