The Fall by James Preller Read Free Book Online

I’d held it in my hand. He’d never know what I thought about. Every kid has secrets. Parents are mostly in the dark.

 
    SOMEBODY’S FINGERPRINT
    This is going to sound dumb. Or lame. Or just really, really boring (so I’ll keep it short). But I’ve been staring at my fingertips for the past ten minutes. I took a black marker and pressed my colored-in thumb onto a white page. There I am. That’s me. Those bumps and contours, the ridges and lines. It looks like the topographical maps Mr. Haycox made us study in P.E.
    (Which was annoying, by the way.)
    In the old days, P.E. was this awesome thing where kids played dodgeball, climbed ropes, and smacked the hell out of each other. Now there are actual bubble tests and all this phony learning. It’s not enough that we run around and sweat, now we have to dance and cooperate, play games of “Trust,” and have meaningful activities. Shoot me now, you know? Anyhow, that’s how I learned about topographical maps and backpacking, which is what I thought about after staring at my fingerprint for the past ten minutes.
    The FBI can identify people by their fingerprints. We’re all our own unique snowflake—isn’t that corny? Nobody else is exactly like me. Which is amazing also, when you think about the world filled with more than seven billion people. I look at those bumps and lines and wonder how that could be possible? There’s got to be some kid in Somalia or wherever with my exact fingerprint. The lines, the ridges, exactly the same. Identical.
    I’m a little worried about how much I’ve been thinking about my fingerprints. All the places I’ve been, the things and people I’ve touched, the marks I’ve left behind.

 
    SHE LIKED BATHS
    She was the most random person I ever met. Everything she said surprised me. Her mind roamed around like a hungry animal, foraging for food.
    â€œDo you take baths?” she asked.
    â€œAlmost never,” I answered.
    â€œA good hot bath can fix just about anything,” she said. We were in the cemetery next to the school grounds. If that sounds creepy, it wasn’t. The cemetery was actually a really pretty, peaceful place. And best of all, it was private. Morgan closed her eyes and stretched her arms. “I learned that from The Bell Jar. She took a lot of baths in that book.”
    I didn’t understand most of what Morgan talked about. I felt like a moose staring dumbly over the rim of the Grand Canyon. It was amazing but … incomprehensible. Nothing organized itself in my mind. Words and ideas shifted around like sand.
    She kept talking about baths, the relief of sinking into hot, hot water. The mirror all fogged up so you couldn’t see yourself, even if you wanted to, which you didn’t.
    â€œI sometimes take two, three baths a day,” she said. “But the water always gets cold, and then I feel like a slab in the morgue.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œA cold pancake!” she chirped brightly, performing a sudden, graceful twirl, her arms outstretched, spinning like a snowflake in a storm.
    I stood there, drawn to her like a magnet, understanding none of it, not a word.
    A corpse in a morgue?
    â€œThere’s nothing sadder than a cold pancake,” I finally said.
    She stopped spinning to stare at me, staggering a little, still dizzy from her whirling dance. “You’re right!” she exclaimed. “Cold pancakes suck ass. Let’s climb a tree!”
    Then she raced off, giddy, toward the tall pines.
    I followed. What else was I going to do? Like I just wrote, I was metal (mental?) and she was my magnet.

 
    MEETING WITH LANEWAY
    I scoped out his office a few times, strolled down the hallway, checking out what’s what. One time the door was open and I spied Laneway at his desk. I half-stepped, half-leaned in, and said, “So this is where the magic happens, huh?”
    He pulled on his mustache,