The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes Read Free Book Online Page B

we could watch a movie or play a board game.” His eyes were pleading.
    “Oh, Billy, I can’t,” said Gabby. “It’s late. And you’re yawning, too.”
    “We could have a snack,” Billy suggested.
    “Are you kidding?” said Gabby. “I’m so full from dinner I feel like I’ll never eat again. I still have my food baby,” she said with a chuckle, tipping her head and casting her eyes downward. “Seriously, are you hungry already?”
    “Not really. But if you were, I’d sit with you while you ate.”
    Gabby twisted her wrist to check her watch. Her bracelets—inches of them, silver and gold, surrounding the watch—jingled. She looked him up and down. “I’m sorry, Billy Boy, but it’s time for bed.”
    “Wait—you said one more hand.”
    “Okay,” said Gabby. “A quick one.”
    During their final hand, Billy held back from playing certain cards when he could have won, prolonging the game as long as possible. But soon Gabby was the winner and he was off to bed.

    He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth. He put on his pajamas and crawled under his covers. He said good night to Gabby and waited.
    And waited.
    And waited.
    When the house was quiet, he checked to see if the light in the guest room was still on. It was. So he went back to his room and waited some more. When he checked again, the light was out.
    And, now, here he was, in his room, ready to begin the night of staying awake.
    He told himself he could do this. He felt a shiver of excitement, then a buzzy sensation. If he made it through the night without sleeping, he’d be a different person, somehow. A more important person.
    His eyelids were the problem—they were as heavy as steel. The situation was worse if he lay down, so he rose from his bed and paced around his room. But the bed was so inviting—soft, warm—that he couldn’t help taking a break, allowing himself only to sit on it.
    He turned his bedside lamp off and on and off and on. He tried to read. He tried to draw. He tried counting backward from one thousand.
    He looked at the dragon stamp on the envelope from Ms. Silver. Then he took the pearl in his open palm and stared at it until it blurred. He pretended it really was magic. “Stay awake,” he whispered. “Stay awake.”
    Just then an idea came to him. Billy’s idea was to scare himself so badly he couldn’t sleep. He turned off the lights and sat in the dark on his bed, resting his back against the wall, his legs crisscrossed into a pretzel. He tried to imagine the worst possible things he could.
    He envisioned a life on his own without Mama and Papa, but that just made him sad. Think. A few memorably frightening scenes from movies danced before his eyes. Think. Some of the pictures in Papa’s big, thick art books were weird and made him uneasy; he recalled them as best he could.
    Think.
    He began to convince himself that there was something hiding in the black space beneath his bed.
    Think.
    The something had white melted flesh with oozing clusters of pimples for eyes. Its nose was a wet hole that made a whistling noise with each breath. It had long, stringy gray hair and thin, knobby fingers and bloody sores all over its naked body. It creaked and rattled and groaned. The thing ate children. Its teeth were sharp as needles. It was stretching and reaching, reaching and stretching. Creeping. Right under him.
    The mattress groaned.
    The wind whistled.
    The radiator rattled.
    The house creaked.
    The curtains moved.
    The shadows vibrated.

    Billy found it hard to breathe. His heart was pounding. He still had the pearl in his hand and his grip around it was so tight his knuckles hurt.
    Awful things were where they didn’t belong. Awful things were hidden everywhere.
    Billy repositioned himself; his bedspread pulled as if something were grabbing it from below. Then his room tilted and the walls started closing in on him.
    Billy sprang from his bed and bolted out of his room. He stopped suddenly. What should he do?