We're All in This Together by Owen King Read Free Book Online

and rubbing the sheets against my chest, attempting to wipe off the words that Steven
Sugar had spray-painted on my body.
    In the nightmare I was tied to a tree, and the Richard Nixon mask was on my face, making it hard to breathe. From the shadows,
a figure emerged; Steven Sugar was dressed in his army fatigues and his eyes were my mother's eyes, dark and unforgiving.
He held a spray can.
    As I wriggled and cried for help, he patiently filled in the letters, bending the words around my torso in cheap red paint. GET OVER IT SHITHEEL! YOU LOST!
    4.
    Stationed in the guest room, my grandfather and I kept watch through the next afternoon, and waited for Steven Sugar to make
his move. The lights were off to keep the room cool, and the main source of illumination came from outside, through the curtains.
The filtered light spilled across the room in a bright orange column. Papa sat in the chair alongside the rifle and tripod,
and flicked back the curtain every minute or so to see if anything was moving on the C-curve segment of the street that was
visible from the window.
    For the most part, we sat in silence. I had simply showed up and plopped down on the guest room bed. Papa said, "Howdy," without
glancing from his window. In the attic I had discovered a box of my mother's brittle old Choose Your Own Adventure paperbacks—where
you moved through the story according to your own strategic decisions—and I absently paged through one entitled The Alien's Tomb. Out of the corner of my eye, I kept an eye on Papa; light fell across his forehead, and made him look young. I wondered if
he was thinking about my grandmother.
    If you trust the dead alien, and follow him through the doorway into the Forever Country. If you retrace your footsteps to the nearest Time Pod.
    "You should be out with your friends." He lifted the corner of the curtain, grimaced at the street, and dropped it back down.
    "I haven't got any," I said. "Not really."
    He sucked on a peanut, then slowly ground it up. "I hold this claim in dubious regard."
    "We moved too much." My mother and I had lived in six towns so far during my school-age years, which in adolescent terms made
me a kind of Okie. It wasn't that I didn't get along with people, or nod to friendly acquaintances in the halls at school.
Rather, I thought, very rationally, that growing up was embarrassing enough without trying to gain an invitation to the party.
Maybe I was more lonely than I let on; maybe after two years in the Amberson school system it was time to accept that my boyhood
fantasy of staying put in one place had finally become a reality. Then again, I found it hard to accept Dr. Vic as a part
of any dream come true.
    If you stay with the jackass and his shit-snarfing dogs . If you ramble on to another town.
    "A boy ought to have friends, George."
    "I'm fifteen."
    "Pardon me. A teenager ought to have friends, George."
    "I get along with people."
    "Well," he said.
    "Well," I said.
    He pulled back the curtain, looked, let go of it. My grandfather cast a sideward glance in my direction. I raised my eyebrows
at him and brushed at the collar of my T-shirt. He snorted, flicked the peanut crumbs from his button-down.
    "You're afraid, aren't you? It's a risk, isn't it? To try and break the ice?"
    "Sure." I wasn't about to deny it.
    Papa rocked back and patted his knees and nodded, as if that just about made everything obvious. "Well, you're a goddamned
freak, aren't you?"
    This statement hung in the air between us for a minute. My grandfather stared at me with perfect assurance; I was too baffled
to be hurt.
    "Thanks a lot," I said, finally. "That helps. That really helps a lot."
    "I mean, kids are curious. They love freaks."
    "Jesus, Papa. This is great. Do you think you might be able to give me a kick in the nuts, too?"
    "No, no," he said, and drew his foot up over his knee. He patted his slipper. "Your toe. Show your toe. It's a conversation
starter. It's interesting."
    I slumped back on the