The Wild Things by Dave Eggers Read Free Book Online Page B

one bite.”
    Max thought this was a pretty good idea, but shook his head. “No, that’s okay.”
    They stood in the night. Far off, a dog or wolf howled. Mr. Beckmann was looking up at the broad silver stripe across the dome of the sky.
    Mr. Beckmann started down toward his house. “Well, I’ll be seeing you, Maximilian.”
    “See you, Mr. Beckmann,” Max said.
    Mr. Beckmann stopped, remembering something. “Remember, Achilles is always ready to eat some Gary.”
    Max laughed and rode home to eat dinner.

CHAPTER X

    Max knew that a bunk bed was the perfect structure to use when building an indoor fort. First of all, bunk beds have a roof. And a roof was essential if you’re going to have an observation tower. And you need an observation tower if you’re going to spot invading armies before they breach your walls and overtake your kingdom. Anyone without bunks would have a much harder time maintaining a security perimeter, and if you can’t do that, you don’t stand a chance against anyone.
    Max had just done a quick survey of the area surrounding his bunk-kingdom and now was down below on the lower bunk, where he could be unseen and unknown. For a while he thought about the sun and whether it would die. He thought about whether he would die someday, too. It was a very strange time in Max’s life. His sister had tried, by proxy, to kill him, and his mother didn’t seem to care about that or the end of the universe. On this evening, the person in the house he seemed to like the most was Gary, and even thinking that sent a shudder through him. He wondered if Mr. Beckmann would allow him to live at his house, and if not, in the barn that he’d threatened his neighbors about.
    Max, tired of thinking, decided to think on paper, and so retrieved his journal from under the bed. His father had given him the journal shortly after he left, and had, in white-out, written the words WANT JOURNAL on the cover.
In this book
, his father had written as inscription and directive,
write what you want. Every day, or as often as you can, write what you want. That way, whenever you’re confused or rudderless, you can look to this book, and be reminded where you want to go and what you’re looking for
. His father had written, by hand, three beginnings on every page. Every page started with:
    I WANT
    I WANT
    I WANT
    And so Max had periodically written his wants, and he’d written many other things, too. But tonight he wanted to write some more wants, so he found a pen and began.
    I WANT
Gary to fall into some kind of bottomless hole
.
    I WANT
Claire to get her foot caught in a beartrap
.
    I WANT
Claire’s friends to die by flesh-eating tapeworms
.

    Then he stopped. His father had reminded him that the journal was for positive wants, not negative wants. When you wanted something
negative
, it didn’t count, he said. A want should be positive, his father had said. A want should improve your life while improving the world, even if just a little bit.
    So Max began again:
    I WANT
to get out of here
.
    I WANT
to go to the moon or some other planet
.
    I WANT
to find some unicorn DNA and then grow a bunch of them and teach them to stick their horns through Claire’s friends
.

    Oh well. He could erase it later. For now just writing it and thinking it felt good. But now he was sick of writing. He wanted to make something. But he didn’t want to set up some whole thing with glue and wood. He didn’t want to have to use tools at all. What did he want to do? This was the central question of this day and most days.
    Max wondered how he might actually build a ship. He had designed many dozens of ships on paper over the past year, and now he wondered if it was time for him to build a real one and sail away. His father had taken him sailing five times the previous summer, and had taught him the basics of piloting a small boat. “You’re a natural!” his father had said, even though Max was afraid of the open water, of rogue waves