Blood Relations Read Online Free PDF

his thumb pressing on my jugular, two fingers squeezing, crackling the vertebrae in back. I let out a small scream.
    “Toy, don’t!” Evelyn yelled. She grabbed at his arm and I saw her nails sink into the underside of his biceps, the part that should be soft but on Toy wasn’t. “You’re hurting him, Toy, stop it.”
    She kept trying but he moved as if she weren’t even there, dragging us both down the hall. When we reached the bathroom he shoved me inside, flipped on the light, and jammed my face into the mirror.
    “Look at that garbage,” he said.
    I hadn’t looked in a mirror in a while. Not since the weekend, probably. Not on purpose though—it just wasn’t something I did very often.
    My eye sockets were deep and black, my skin was blotchy, off-white, and chalky. My hair stood straight up in the air on the left side and in front, and lay pasted to my head everywhere else. It was all matted together in lumps and shiny with oil. My teeth were dark.
    “Hot damn, I look like Keith Richards,” I said, snarling and bobbing my head at myself.
    “Fool,” Toy snapped. “The right response is supposed to be ‘Oh my god , I look like Keith Richards.’ It’s not really a good thing.”
    “Would you lighten up for once,” I said, turning away from the mirror.
    “You big spoiled baby,” he said, blocking me from leaving the bathroom. “I finally realize, you have no problems that you don’t make up all by yourself.” He hesitated, his lips pulling in tighter, harder, as he struggled for words. He looked straight up at the ceiling, then back toward Evelyn, as if she could make it come out clearer. Suddenly his face whipped back around to me. “You have no right,” he finally said quietly. “No right. You have no business. You have everything.” He let me go and shoved me backward at the same time. “You make me sick.” With that, Toy stomped down the hall and out of my house.
    I was thinking about what he said, agreeing with him, but at the same time missing the pills he’d just taken away. As I headed to the kitchen for an eye-opener, I bumped into Evelyn. She had stayed . My heart started beating again.
    “He’s so intense,” I said, shrugging.
    She folded her arms. “I think it’s your self-pity, self-absorption, self-flagellation, self-mutilation, all that self-stuff that Toy can’t relate to.”
    “Huh?”
    “Grow up.”
    “Oh. I get it.” Not that I actually did. “Where was he all that time, Evelyn?”
    She shook her head sadly. “I don’t know. He doesn’t say.” Evelyn started walking down the hall toward the door, and I followed her.
    “He certainly came back with a stick up his ass,” I said.
    She shook her head. “What is it like for you, to live every moment entirely beside the point?”
    “You like me, I know it.”
    “Good-bye, Boca Loca ,” she said.
    “Wait,” I said as she started down the stairs. Suddenly none of it seemed funny anymore. I was very nearly alone. “Could you stay with me for a while?”
    “No. I have to go to school.”
    “Oh,” I said. “That’s right, I forgot. I’ll be going. Next week, I’ll be going again.” I was mumbling by the end of it, backing away from the door, thinking already about the refrigerator.
    “Don’t do what you’re thinking about,” she said, shooting her arm straight out from the shoulder and pointing at me. As if she knew exactly. It gave me a shudder. She sat down on the top step, and I came out to join her.
    “I only have a couple of minutes, then I really have to go.”
    “I know. That’s okay.”
    “He seems to really like you. Toy, that is. For some reason.”
    “I like that. I mean, even if he’s yelling at me and calling me garbage, there’s something I like about it.”
    Evelyn nodded, looking out at the street.
    “How about you... Evelyn?” I asked as timidly as I could without snuffling around her ankles. “Could you ? Do you think? Like me?”
    She squared around to look at me. My heart