Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

stomping on the bleachers. They felt great. I felt great. And maybe coach felt great.
    It was beautiful what they didn’t identify, what they couldn’t see. If Dr. Childress had seen me, if he’d been inside The Beaver suit with me, he’d have said what nice dimples like crescent moons, but by then he may have been dead.
    The second-half horn blasted, basketballs smacked the floor. The teams filtered onto the court. The crowd still buzzing. A championship so near. My time was up. Or just beginning.
    Down the ramp, to the boiler room where I usually changed and secretly slipped out of the building. Only I went left into the boy’s locker room, along the aisle of lockers. “Eriksen . . . Perez . . . Johansson!” Friggin’ Johansson, so proud of his long blond curls. Ready to celebrate the championship in front of all those cameras and adoring admirers after the game.
    I opened the locker and, on the top shelf, just like I’d scouted, was his shampoo/conditioner. One last look around. On the court above, a ref’s whistle and the crowd booed. “It’s the least I can do,” I whispered. I replaced his old tube with the one I brought, the one filled with Nair, the hair remover. Let him shampoo with that. Let him rub it in good.
    When the triumphant team came filing out of the auditorium to meet the town, the press and the cameras, cheers went up and flash bulbs illuminated the night, the team surrounding me, The Beaver. I made the “V” for victory. More flashes. Night became day. There was no Tommy Johansson. His senior glory buried, forever.
    Coach Westmore came over to me and gave me a hug. “You’re on,” he said. “I’ll leave you a key tomorrow. The Principal gave thumbs up for all your hard work. But Sunday only. Then we’ll expect the key back. These are some of the first computers in the state. It’s only good for research, so I hope you know what you’re doing.”
    “Coach, coach,” said the reporter from The Pioneer , “can we get a shot of you with The Beaver?” He hugged me again; I was on my way.
    ***
    Even from outside the farmhouse, my bedroom appeared dreary, having been a root cellar for the original owner back in the early 1920’s, then a storm cellar before the one window, single light bulb and small washbasin were added. It sat below ground of the clapboard building, and with such steep steps that Momma rarely came down. When she did it usually meant trouble.
    I descended the worn wooden stairs, sweaty. The Beaver’s neoprene smell overrode my own odor and clung to my t-shirt.
    “She gives me the creeps,” I remember Carly saying to Momma. Neither Carly nor Lyle wanted to sleep in the same room with me. “She’s bad luck.”
    “I wanna be with her ,” Lyle said clutching Carly’s sleeve. “Carly and me.” She pushed him off. She fought it, fought it hard. She wanted to stay in the room at the top, but she didn’t want to share it.
    She and Momma argued over the territory, pie tins thrown, cabinets slammed, fear palpable. Carly in a frenzy, pointing at me: “Creepy spirits,” she said. “Just look at her!” Momma’s face contorted. Wraiths worming in her head.
    In a fit Carly knocked two candlesticks to the floor. Momma was going to give it to Carly, and I’d get Lyle in the cellar.
    But Momma looked at Lyle cowering in the corner then at me, all the while Carly screaming about demons. Anyone could see Momma feared for him, being the littlest and the one with the least gumption. How could he wake up or go to sleep seeing my grotesque face, and how would he stand up to my constant, troubling energy?
    So by saying nothing, by letting Carly have her fear-mongering spotlight and Momma her spook superstitions, I got the cellar solo. The smallest room, but at least I had it and my doubts to myself.
    “You know what’s so terrific being The Beaver?” Still flushed by my success, I let down my hair and plopped on my small bed. I waited for the springs to stop squeaking and