Death of a Pharaoh Read Online Free PDF Page B

since we lived
in a nice safe neighborhood.
    She might not have
felt so confident if she knew what I did about Mr. Pasquale in number 17; or
about the young blonde Mrs. Badowski across the street who was well on the way
to bankrupting her husband buying expensive lingerie online. She insisted on
trying the skimpy items on right there in front of the deliveryman who always
accepted her offer to stay for coffee, and more! I knew all of this because she
couldn’t resist giving me a kiss on the cheek whenever she saw me.
    Anyway, I go
strolling down the street minding my own business when the second light from
the corner of Main Street, the one in front of Tommy Skokan’s house, blew out
as if someone had pulled the plug right when I walked underneath! I might have
considered it a coincidence if the same thing hadn’t happened at a different
spot two days later coming home after karate. I tried taking detours but it
only got worse. It was so bad by Christmas that Conn Edison had a repair truck
parked permanently in front of the donut shop two blocks from my street.
Eventually, I learned to swerve around the lights. Especially after I got a
skateboard. It seemed that my capacity to fry the bulbs had a limited range.
    I didn’t have the
same effect on fluorescent lights at school, thank goodness, or the smaller
ones at home; especially those energy savers that look like a corkscrew. That
is unless my emotions ran high or something like that, if you get my drift.
Once I discovered masturbation, I had to keep spare bulbs in my bedside table
drawer or do it in the dark. My personal paranormal activity really came to a
head when I started to date at fifteen. Most of the girls at school found me
attractive even if a bit weird. Years of karate lessons had sculpted my body
lean and solid with an impressive six-pack.
    A month before my
sixteenth birthday, Maria Fanelli snuck me into her bedroom while her parents
slept downstairs. It kind of added to the excitement along with all that
Catholic stuff. Everything went great until I got to home base and all she
could think about was how much bigger Tyrone was; this dude who played football
and looked like a black version of the Hulk. Hardly a turn on but she didn’t
know that I could read her thoughts so I gamely plowed on so at least I could
say I had lost my virginity.
    At what should
have been the defining moment in my young male life, in the middle of my first
ever, non-solo orgasm, the bedside light exploded, Maria screamed, my erection
went south and her parents woke up. Seconds later, I snuck out the back door
tugging on my jeans as I hopped toward the gate like someone in a three-legged
sack race with an invisible partner. I almost fell into their swimming pool. It
took me as long to take the plunge again with girls as it did to get back into
the water after my near drowning.
    Around that time,
I decided that my superhero fixation was a mistake. Sure, I’d divvied out
justice like the time I painted the word ‘WIFEBEATER’ on Mr. Hanover’s homeroom
blackboard and hid it with the pull-down map of the United States. He raised it
in the middle of social studies class and within thirty seconds, a dozen copies
appeared on Facebook. Even after the janitor came in and scrubbed it off, you
could still see a faint outline for the rest of the semester.
    A month later, he
resigned and never came back. Only problem, the security cameras mounted in the
hallway recorded me entering the classroom first thing in the morning and they
found the can of spray paint in my locker. I got six weeks detention for that
stunt and my parents had to pay for the cleanup.
    My regular trips
to the Principal’s office became a major problem so when I suddenly won a full
scholarship to a private boarding school, my parents decided that a change in
environment might help. I never applied or anything, which seemed strange to
me. They told me it was probably an equality thing, me being black and all. It
meant