the Solitude Of Prime Numbers (2010) by Paolo Giordano Read Free Book Online

necessary.
    Alice shook her head no. She pressed herself even closer to the wall.
    "What? Don't you want it anymore?" Viola asked her.
    "Go on," Federica cut in. "You asked for it and now you can eat it."
    Alice gulped.
    "What if I don't?" she summoned the courage to say.
    "If you don't eat it, you'll accept the consequences," Viola replied enigmatically.
    "What consequences?"
    "You can't know the consequences. Ever."
    They want to take me to the boys, Alice thought. Or else they'll strip me and not give me back my clothes.
    Trembling, but almost imperceptibly, she held her hand out toward Viola, who dropped the filthy candy into her palm. She slowly brought it to her mouth.
    The others had fallen silent, and seemed to be thinking, no, she's not really going to do it. Viola was impassive.
    Alice put the gumdrop on her tongue and felt the hairs that were stuck to it dry up her saliva. She chewed only twice and something squeaked between her teeth.
    Don't throw up, she thought. Do not throw up.
    She choked back an acidic spurt of gastric juices and swallowed the candy. She felt it as it went down, like a stone, along her esophagus.
    The fluorescent light on the ceiling gave off an electrical hum and the voices of the kids in the gym were a formless mixture of shouts and laughter. Here in the basement the air was heavy and the windows were too small to allow it to circulate.
    Viola stared solemnly at Alice. Without smiling she nodded her head as if to say now we can go. Then she turned around and left the locker room, passing the other three without so much as a glance.

6
    T here was something important you had to know about Denis. To tell the truth, Denis thought it was the only thing about him worth knowing, so he'd never told anyone.
    His secret had a terrible name, which settled like a nylon cloth over his thoughts and wouldn't let them breathe. There it was, weighing heavily inside his head like an inevitable punishment with which he'd have to come to terms sooner or later.
    When, at age ten, his piano teacher had guided his fingers through the D major scale, pressing his hot palm on the back of Denis's hand, Denis had been unable to breathe. He bent his torso slightly forward to hide the erection that had exploded in his sweatpants. For his entire life he would think of that moment as true love, and would fumble around every corner of his existence in search of the clinging warmth of his teacher's touch.
    Each time memories like this surfaced in his mind, making his neck and hands sweat, Denis would lock himself in the bathroom and masturbate fiercely, sitting backward on the toilet. The pleasure lasted only a moment and radiated just a few inches beyond his penis. But the guilt rained down on him from above like a shower of dirty water. It ran down his skin and nestled in his guts, making everything slowly rot, the way that damp eats away at the walls of an old house.
    During biology class, in the basement lab, Denis watched Mattia dissect a piece of steak, separating the white fibers from the red. He wanted to stroke his hands. He wanted to discover whether that cumbersome lump of desire that had taken root in his head would really melt like butter simply through contact with the classmate he was in love with.
    They were sitting close to each other. Both rested their forearms on the lab bench. A row of transparent flasks, beakers, and test tubes separated them from the rest of the class and deflected the rays of light, distorting everything beyond that line.
    Mattia was intent on his work and hadn't looked up for at least a quarter of an hour. He didn't like biology, but he pursued the task with the same rigor he applied to all subjects. Organic matter, so violable and full of imperfections, was incomprehensible to him. The vital odor of the soft piece of meat aroused nothing in him but a faint disgust.
    With a pair of tweezers he extracted a thin white filament and deposited it on the glass slide. He brought his eyes to