Almost Home Read Online Free PDF

donut guy so he gives us lots of stuff cheap. Once a day we get tacos or something else salty and the rest of the time it’s apple fritters, day-old glazed or whatever we can Dumpster. But then one morning I reach for the wad of ones and fives in my pocket and it’s not a wad anymore, it’s just a dollar. I’m not sure how to tell Tracy; I’m a little afraid she’ll get mad.
    She takes care of everything except for money; that’s my job. Once she pulled a hair band out of her pocket and I saw a little corner of green come out too but she stuffed it back down fast and didn’t mention it. The next time we went for donuts I waited for a second to see if she’d pull it out but she didn’t. It was fine with me.
    But now I’m almost out and it’s only morning and I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do. I want to tell her before breakfast so she can plan ahead: I wait till she rubs her eyes and spits and sits up and then I say “Um, Tracy?” and she says “Yeah?” and I tell her. My heart is beating super fast like I did something wrong and I’m about to get caught. She doesn’t look at me or talk, which makes it beat faster because I can’t tell if she hates me now or not. After a long long time she turns to me and says “Okay. So where’s your house?”
    We wait until the clock at Winchell’s says ten because some days my dad goes in late to work, and then start walking up toward Beachwood Canyon. Of course it sounds easy: I know where the key is under the fake plastic rock by the doormat, and I know where the food is in the pantry, and I know where Linda keeps spare twenties in her bra drawer and that she won’t miss a few. But as the hill starts getting steeper and we get closer to the 101 I’m feeling more and more like throwing up.
    Tracy can tell, I guess, because under the highway she turns to me and says “You’re fucking green. What’s wrong with you?” I chew on my tongue. Number one, I’m scared of getting caught, which I obviously can’t tell Tracy. But more than that I’m scared of being in the house, by Brian’s room, the walls and the doors and the carpet and who I am inside them clamping down around me like a snake and squeezing tight. This past week has turned me different: now I’m a girl I like to watch in windows, purple-haired and dirty, and from the way that Tracy looks at me, I can tell I know so many more things than they would ever let me. But I feel like as soon as I’m in that house I’ll go back to how I was before, even if nobody’s home. I don’t know how to explain it to Tracy: I’m sure she’s never felt anything remotely that dumb. But she just keeps staring at me, and then goes “What?” and I know I have to answer.
    I can’t let her think I’m backing out of going. The money is my one and only job; I can’t not come through. If I try to explain that I’m scared the walls and carpet in my house will turn me into someone else, she’ll look at me hard and like a stranger, the way she did that first night when I asked her if we were going home. Just imagining it makes me want to die. But she’s making me talk so I have to say something, and for some weird reason the only thing I can figure out to explain to her is Brian.
    I have never breathed a word of him to anyone and the words feel bizarre in my mouth: they’ve been coiled up somewhere so much farther down than that forever and now they’re stretching out and up and I can feel them behind my teeth and it surprises me, like some weird food I’ve never tasted. I have no idea why I’m telling Tracy this or why I’d even think she’d understand. But for some reason I’m not scared. And after I get the first few sentences out from my mouth into the air she looks over at me with this kind of recognition I’ve never seen before in anyone, and she says “I know” and takes my hand. She holds it all the way to my house and she doesn’t let me go, even when my palm starts sweating.
    At the house