Crash Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’m around. You got a cell?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMan, you are desperate. Eddy’s just above the coffee shop. Apartment five. Tell him I sent you. Me and Eddy are tight. But you’ll have to have the twenty bucks, and don’t ask him for food or anything. He hates that.”
    â€œWhat about the dog?”
    â€œHard to say with Eddy. Could go either way.”
    Ethan walked off, but then turned to look back at me. The look said he was worried. He was a good guy, and it was comforting to know I had at least one person on the street worried about my sorry ass.

Chapter Ten
    I couldn’t do it at first. Beg for money. I really couldn’t. I hung out behind a donut shop and waited to see what came out the back door, hoping there was food headed for a Dumpster or something. My instincts were good. Around noon, the unsold baking from the day before was tossed. I can’t tell you how good they tasted. Chocolate donuts. Blueberry muffins. Enough for me and Ozzie, and I stashed some in my pack. Not exactly health food, but it was a start.
    In the afternoon, I knew I had to get up my courage to talk to strangers. My line was lame, and I felt like a really bad actor. “Get a job,” one guy in a suit said. “Get off the street and stop bothering people,” one finely dressed woman said. When I saw cops coming my way, I held my head up and walked on by. The best I could do was mumble something to people passing by, and once in a while someone would hand me a quarter or a couple of dimes without making eye contact. It was brutal. Sometimes it was just nickles. Who the hell gives a homeless person nickles? But it was sinking in. I was homeless. And pretty helpless when it came to bumming money from people.
    By six o’clock I had $23, but it had taken me almost all day to get it. And ten of it had come from Ethan. I headed to the coffee shop, tied up Ozzie outside and went in for a coffee and sandwich. Yeah. Kids hung out here because you could get coffee and an egg-salad sandwich for $2.99, and they didn’t charge tax. I was afraid to leave Ozzie alone, so I took my meager meal outside and sat down on the sidewalk, my back against the wall. I tried begging some more but had no luck. I just didn’t have it in me.
    At 11:45 I went in the door beside the coffee shop and up the stairs. I knocked on the door of apartment five. Crazy Eddy was wearing a bathrobe and had a shower cap on his head. He was maybe thirty-five and had a bulging stomach and kind of bugged-out eyes.
    â€œEthan said I might be able to crash here tonight,” I said.
    â€œYou got twenty bucks?”
    I showed him a baggie with the ten and a bunch of change.
    â€œOkay,” he said. Then he looked down at Ozzie, who was sitting quietly beside me. “Who’s this?” Eddy asked.
    â€œHis name’s Ozzie.”
    â€œI don’t usually take dogs.”
    â€œOzzie’s the sweetest dog you’ll ever meet. I promise.”
    Eddy bent down, grabbed Ozzie’s muzzle and put his face right up to the dog’s in a pretty aggressive way. But Ozzie didn’t flinch. Eddy stayed like that for a couple of seconds, and I almost thought he was going to hurt Ozzie. But then he patted Oz on the head and stood up. “Sleep on the floor—you and the dog. Not on the furniture. And no eating my food.”
    I followed Eddy into the apartment, and he pointed me toward the living room while he traipsed off to another room and slammed the door. When I walked into the living room, I saw three other kids there. Two were already in sleeping bags and conked out. A third, a girl, was sitting with her back to me, reading in the dim light.
    â€œHey,” I said.
    She turned. It was Mackenzie. “Cameron.”
    I didn’t know what to say. Ozzie recognized her and licked her face. “I thought I’d lost you,” I said.
    I sat down beside her. “You did,” she whispered.