Dreamland Read Online Free PDF Page B

was a teacher before. My stepmom has some family nearby.”
    So the woman she’d seen unpacking was his stepmom. Dea waited for him to mention his real mom but he didn’t, so she didn’t press.
    He was quiet for a minute and Dea started to panic. She couldn’t think of anything to say. Then he blurted out, “It’s too open here. Too much sky.” Almost immediately, he laughed again. “I guess I’m used to the city.”
    She knew exactly what he meant—the sky was like a big mouth, hanging open, ready to swallow you whole. But she just said, “Where’d you move from?”
    â€œChicago,” he said.
    â€œI lived in Chicago for a while,” she said. “Lincoln Park.”
    He turned to look out the window. “That’s where we lived,” he said. Then, “Where to now?”
    She got a flush of pleasure. Don’t trust it , a voice, her logical voice, piped up quickly. You know you’ll only be disappointed.
    Maybe not, another voice said stubbornly. Maybe he’s got those four nipples after all.
    It was so absurd: she was actually hoping that the boy next to her had extra nipples.
    â€œWe could go to Cincinnati,” she said. “It’s only two hours.” She was joking, of course. But Connor’s reflection, overlaid across a plain of brown and gray, smiled. “Drive on,” he said.
    Dea found it easy—almost too easy—to open up to Connor. In less than an hour, she’d told Connor more than she’d told anyone in years—way more than she’d ever told Gollum. They shared likes and dislikes, words neither of them could stand to hear, like cream and moisture . They’d hopscotched from Dea’s love of old junk to her hatred of bananas to the months she’d spent living next to a military base in Georgia. Her mom had a boyfriend then, the only boyfriend she remembered.
    â€œSo it’s just you and your mom, then?” Connor asked. She appreciated that he didn’t just straight-up ask her about her dad. Not that she would have anything to say, except he looks good in a red polo shirt.
    She nodded. “What about you?” she said. “No siblings?”
    A muscle twitched in Connor’s jaw. “No. Used to, though.” His fingers drummed against the dashboard, the first time he had shown any sign of discomfort. Dea tried to think of something to say, words of comfort or a question about what had happened, but then he was smiling again and the moment, the impression of past pain, was gone. “You really hate bananas?”
    Dea felt vaguely disappointed, as if she’d missed an opportunity. “Despise them,” she said.
    â€œEven banana bread?”
    â€œEven worse.” She made a face. “Why ruin bread by putting banana in it? It’s like a banana sneak attack. I like them out in the open, where I can see them.”
    He laughed and chucked her chin. “You’re a piece of work, Donahue.” But the way he said it made it sound like a compliment.
    Connor plugged in his iPhone and played her some of his favorite songs—stuff by Coldplay and the Smiths, plus a bunch of songs from bands she’d never heard of—but he never stopped talking over the music. He didn’t like the color red (“too obvious”), or raw onions (“it’s texture, not taste”), or highways. “They look the same everywhere,” he said. “Back roads are way more interesting. They have flavor. Except,” he quickly added, “for this beautiful highway, of course.”
    He gestured out the window; they were passing an industrial farm. Dea knew only one way of driving to Cincinnati, on IN-46. The view had been the same since they’d left Fielding. The three F s: farms, flatlands, firearm ranges.
    Connor had been a swimmer in Chicago and was “decent—good for state, not good enough to go national.” He hated