Dirt Read Online Free PDF

bullshit. I’m just lying on a rack, and that’s all.
    His mother and aunt and cousin having high tea now. All sounds of their movement gone. Only the sounds of flies and bees on flight paths nearby, the dry landings of grasshoppers, an occasional car passing. The world in its immensity and such disappointing nothingness. Galen rolled over, off the racks, into the dirt. Just like that. No decision, just rolled over, and now it was gone, the entire experience, all wasted, and he was in the dirt again. Nothing learned, nothing gained.

Chapter 5
    G alen tried to push up on his arms, but he felt broken. This sucks, he said. He lay facedown. The dirt scratching against his burned thighs hurt more than he would have guessed. The sweater an oven, a cocoon. A slick of sweat beneath, and he was thirsty. His face on fire.
    His butt muscles were coming alive, blood rushing into his thighs, and his legs felt like hollow tubes, the muscle not attached to the bone. He pushed up onto his knees, then tried to stand, his legs like straws. Points of pain everywhere along their edges, the muscles unreachable, not responding. But he was able to take a step, and another. His back had been folded for too long, so he felt like he was leaning.
    Almost got you, he said. You almost had to admit you’re not really a body. Just a fake, an illusion, and I’m watching you reassemble now. All the clanking around to pull the dream back together.
    He lurched his way around the shed to the fig tree where the other illusions were just finishing tea.
    You look a little stiff, his aunt said, smiling. And suddenly he understood. His aunt hated him. It was instantly clear. He liked her, and he had thought she liked him, but now he could see that she hated his mother and hated him as her extension. Her smile all meanness.
    Wow, Galen said. Holy shit.
    What? Jennifer asked.
    Nothing, he said.
    We’re finished now, his mother said. We’ll be leaving to see Grandma in a few minutes.
    Galen made his way carefully to the free chair and sat down. Cast iron, no cushion. His butt might fall back asleep. But it felt good to sit, and the shade was glorious. He closed his eyes to the smell of figs, a scent so rich it made a body of the air. Wow, he said. The figs.
    Nearly ripe, his mother said. Another week at most. And she poured him a glass of orange juice. Here, she said. Even when she liked him least, she would provide for him. And this was the difference. His aunt would push him off the edge if she ever had the chance, but his mother would never do that.
    Galen wrapped both hands around the cool glass of orange juice, and he wondered whether to drink it. He was thirsty, incredibly thirsty. And the orange juice would be delicious, cool and tangy, with a bit of pulp, and he loved the pulp. But he felt dizzy, the top of his head gone, a floating sensation, and he didn’t want to lose that. He felt he was seeing everything more clearly now. The orange juice might stop all that. Too cold, too acidic, a jolt that would bring all his attention to his stomach, and he would no longer be floating free.
    Freakazoid, Jennifer said.
    Galen closed his eyes and tried to focus. What did he really want? He held the glass of orange juice in both hands and brought it closer, close enough to put his nose into the glass and smell the sweet fruit. He breathed the orange juice, in and out, in and out.
    I can’t watch, his mother said. We’re leaving in five minutes.
    Galen didn’t like having the time pressure. That was changing the experience. An end was being enforced now, and that was going to fuck up everything. Damn it, he said.
    Whoa, Jennifer said.
    He didn’t want her here. Or his aunt. He wanted to be alone with the orange juice.
    And then he decided to just do it. He tilted the glass and tasted the juice, sweet and bitter and overpowering, and he held it in his mouth, refused to swallow.
    Does Mikey like it? Jennifer asked.
    He tried to