Caring Is Creepy Read Online Free PDF

pestle and stared at it for a long while in a blank way.
    “Take it with you if you want. Just be sure to bring it back quick. Knowing Mom, she’ll get a notion to use that thing after work tomorrow for the first time in ten years.”
    “Thanks, thanks. That’s perfect, Flipper. I’ll be out in a blink of a lamb’s tail.”
    I walked back to the kitchen and stared at my reflection in the door of the microwave oven. I flashed on Mom being led out of the house in handcuffs. I leaned across the sink and took a drink of warm water from the faucet. Even then I knew this wouldn’t be the end of it. As I examined a newly formed whitehead above my eyebrow, the front door banged shut. I listened for the sound of his truck, but he must of walked from somewhere.
    The world outside turned a deep, dusty blue. Along the roadside ditch, fireflies blinked. Crickets in the bush below the window complained about the heat. Somewhere in the endless evening sky beyond the backyard trees, heat lightning washed the horizon withlight. Gone even before I had time to name it for what it was. I said its name out loud afterward because the thought of it made me smile. “Heat lightning,” I told the empty kitchen. Right then I remembered the tune Hayes was humming. It was one Mom sometimes sang in the shower when she was in a good mood: “Sunshine Keeps Falling on My Head.”

L.L.
    I met Logan Loy by complete accident. I became his friend on purpose. Dani and me were on the Internet when I first came across him, but we weren’t exactly playing The Game. We’d just finished a very short and intense session with a man who claimed to be a history professor from Liverpool who was visiting America. After a few silly small-talk messages, he told us he was doing something very nasty with a peeled carrot and wanted us to try it ourselves and tell him about it. He kept calling us “honey bunch,” which is what Dani’s dad sometimes called her, and this freaked her out a little. Dani pushed me aside to tell him carrots were only good for feeding pigs and other livestock, so what did that make him? He wrote back, lightning fast, “You’re a fatty, aren’t you, honey bunch? You’re the little fat piggy here. Not me.” Dani’s eyes welled up with tears. She jumped away from the computer as though it had snapped at her. He slipped in a few more messages before I could block him. “I’m going to tear a hole in your belly button and fuck your piggy fat. I’m going to hunt you down and kill you with my cock, honey bunch. Don’t think I can’t find you. I’m looking at you through your webcam right now.”
    This last part startled even me because Wynn had set up a webcam the day before, although we’d yet to put it to use. Dani covered the golf ball-sized camera with her hand and then unplugged it. I thought maybe we should take a break from the computer. When I told her this, she did something strange. Her face wrinkled up likea clenched fist and she pounded on the desk, shouting, “No, I’m not going to let that nasty man ruin my game!” She shouted this so loud her mom called down the stairs to see if she was alright. I suggested we try something a little different.
    All this had Dani wired tighter than a broken jaw. I thought she needed distraction. Since Dani had been going on and on about wanting to see The Shins in concert, her favorite band from that soundtrack album, I hunted down their website.
    “Look,” I said, “they’re all dressed like superheroes and lying in bed together.”
    Dani pushed me aside and scrolled around looking for nearby concert dates. Per usual, she got hung up on the message board. There were only a few people leaving messages, but in no time at all, Dani had them sending her private messages.
    After about ten minutes of this, Dani finally went to the bathroom and I took over. She’d waited just a drip too long to do it. As she waddled away, I noticed a small damp spot on the seat of her pants, and when