Untouchable by Scott O'Connor Read Free Book Online Page B

his dad pay for the new clothes. He would pay for them with his own allowance money. He didn’t want his dad to have to pay for the fact that he was weak, the fact that he couldn’t stop the other kids from stealing his things.
    The Kid could smell it even before he’d opened the door of his gym locker. Strong pee. Morning pee. He opened his locker and the stench socked him in the nose. Boys around him made gagging noises, plugged their nostrils and backed away from The Kid’s locker. The Kid looked inside. His school clothes were dark with it, his pants and shirt and socks. His backpack was dark with it. The smell was overpowering. On the other side of the lockers, Razz and some other boys were laughing, even though they couldn’t see what happened. They knew what had happened, they’d been waiting for it. Some other boys made retching sounds, mimed throwing up into a garbage can. The Kid looked for Matthew and found him over at the other end of a wooden bench, tying his shoes, staring hard at the laces, trying to pretend he didn’t hear or see or smell anything.
    The Kid felt someone standing right behind him. He turned and Brian was there, towering over him.
    Mr. Bromwell dropped his leg to the floor, lifted his other leg by the ankle and pulled it tight behind his back. He looked at The Kid, looked at The Kid’s notebook. Waited.
    The Kid knew he could give the answer Mr. Bromwell wanted, the answer that would explain everything, why bad things happened to The Kid, why The Kid was like he was. He knew that if he told this, Mr. Bromwell could maybe even get the other kids to leave him alone, to let him be. But The Kid also knew that once you told a secret it was loose in the world, it was a wild thing.
    The Kid picked up his pencil, stared at the blank page.
    Brian Bromwell was a good six inches taller than The Kid, long and lean like his father, packed with wiry muscle. It was impossible to get away from him, impossible to run faster or break free when Brian pinned him to the sidewalk and dangled long, glistening strings of saliva from his bottom lip, squeezing The Kid’s face with one strong hand, prying open The Kid’s mouth, trying to get the spit to fall in. Sometimes The Kid was able to clench his jaw tight and Brian’s spit landed on his cheek or in his eye. But sometimes Brian got a thumb wedged inside and was able to get The Kid’s mouth open and the spit fell right into the back of The Kid’s throat.
    Or sometimes worse things happened, things like this, the smell of strong pee in the locker room.
    Brian had smiled at The Kid, a nasty slash of a smile, then he moved away, turned the corner into the next row of lockers. More laughter from the boys on that side. The bell rang and the locker room emptied. The Kid looked for Matthew, but Matthew had already gone. The Kid stood there in his underpants, looking at the wet clothes in his locker, frozen, unsure what to do.
    “Whitley?” Mr. Bromwell pulled his ankle tight alongside his waist. He was watching The Kid, still waiting for an answer.
    Brian once told The Kid that Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were his favorite days of the week because at dinner those nights his father would tell Mrs. Bromwell and Brian and his brother everything The Kid had written in his notebook during their session at school. Brian said that at dinner those nights the whole Bromwell family would laugh and laugh at all the secrets The Kid told their father.
    The Kid closed his notebook, returned it to his backpack. Mr. Bromwell dropped his leg, frowned.
    The phone on the desk rang, a single red light flashing along with the sound. Mr. Bromwell answered, shook his head, hung up the phone.
    “Your father’s here,” he said. “We’ll talk more about this on Wednesday.”
    The janitor came out to the curb in front of the school, a tall, bearded black man with a blue bandana wrapped around the top of his head. He leaned his elbow into the passenger window of the