The Most Dangerous Animal of All by Gary L. Stewart, Susan Mustafa Read Free Book Online Page A

real mad,” Aileen replied.
    The next morning, Aileen was waiting for him in the hall. “How’s your backside?” she said, laughing. Van punched her in the arm. Hard.
    It didn’t take long for Van’s cousins to pick up where they had left off when he moved. At breakfast, the girls began making fun of him for reading a book at the table. When Aileen accidentally spilled milk on his book, Van exploded.
    “Don’t cry over spilt milk,” his cousins jeered.
    “You have no idea. This is a first edition,” Van cried, grabbing his book and running into the kitchen to tenderly dry each page.
    The girls spent the summer teasing him mercilessly. One afternoon, as Van sat alone on the handrail of the second-floor porch, reading, Ellie asked him to go to the car and fetch her sunglasses. Startled from his book, Van fell over the railing, landing on his head in front of the whole family. Ellie screamed when Van hit the sandy ground with a thud. For a moment, everyone thought he was dead. Embarrassed, my father lay there stunned for a moment, then got up, brushed the sand from his clothes, and disappeared into a far room in the back of the house to cry. He knew this was more ammunition for his cousins. He was different and could not fit in. And he didn’t care enough to try. He preferred rummaging through an old trunk he’d found in the attic, looking at the crinkled papers and yellowed christening gowns someone had tucked away years ago, rather than playing silly games. He didn’t want to run on the beach with them or swim in Withers Swash. He wanted to be left alone with his books, his escape from his family.
    His cousin Mildred had already escaped.
    She had disgraced the Best family the year before when she gave birth out of wedlock to a baby girl named Joyce. Mildred promptly ran off to Hollywood with an aspiring Cuban actor, leaving her child to be raised by her aunt Estelle. Joyce would be raised to believe that her aunts—Bits, Louise, and Aileen—were her sisters, and her great-aunt, Estelle, was her mother.
    As the summer wore on, Van began longing for San Francisco. His dark, lonely bedroom was more tolerable than this.
    Earl realized early on that it was fruitless to try to force Van and Ellie’s relationship. Van made no bones about his hatred for his stepmother, and he constantly tried to make Earl see that she was mean to him, hoping his father would send her away.
    On the way home from the beach, things finally came to a head. Ellie was talking with Earl, and Van interrupted, smiling because he knew it would make her mad.
    “Van, has anyone invited you to this conversation?” Ellie said.
    “I didn’t need an invitation to speak before you came along,” Van said smartly.
    Earl slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road. He grabbed Van, yanked him from the car, and spanked him in front of his cousins and everyone driving by. Humiliated, Van huddled in the corner of the backseat, ignoring his laughing cousins, staring daggers into the back of Ellie’s head. He dreaded the coming weeks he would have to spend with his stepmother and cousins, who Earl had decided should spend the remainder of their summer vacation in Indiana.
    Once back on the road, my grandfather stopped in every state along the way—North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana—and let each of the children drive a few feet, just so they could tell their friends they had driven in different states. Van wanted to refuse to participate, but one look at Earl’s face when his turn came convinced him otherwise. He drove slowly, sitting in the driver’s seat next to Ellie, his knuckles white on the wheel.
    From the backseat, Bits watched Van and almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
    6
    After that first miserable summer with Ellie, Van was almost happy to see his mother when he returned to San Francisco. He ran into the bedroom that housed his most precious possessions, feeling lighthearted for the first time in months. Here he