Drought Read Online Free PDF

walking through a small and aromatic forest. Maria led Tyler to the refrigerated shelves at the back of the store.
    â€˜Be careful,’ she said. ‘The floor’s still wet where they were fighting over the water.’
    â€˜I totally appreciate this, Maria.’
    Maria handed him a wire basket and smiled at him. She was very petite, with black flicked-up hair like a TV star from the 1960s and a heart-shaped face with huge brown eyes. Tyler loved her little upturned nose and the way her lips pouted as if she were almost on the verge of crying, and he loved her wrists which were so thin he could have clasped his hands all the way around them. He had surreptitiously taken photographs of her in class with his cellphone, and he had six or seven of them stuck on to the back of his bedroom closet door. More than anything else he was intoxicated by the smell of her. She always seemed to smell of vanilla, and roses.
    â€˜Is you sister very sick?’ she asked, as she stacked two-liter bottles of Arrowhead into one of the baskets.
    â€˜She has this really high temperature, that’s all. We’re not sure what it is.’
    â€˜Well, I hope she gets better soon. And I hope the water comes back on soon. It was so scary this morning. We had around ten of them in here, and they were taking bottles of water and candy bars and anything else they could lay their hands on and just running out without paying. When my dad tried to stop them they hit him with a mop-handle.’
    â€˜What – was it a gang?’
    â€˜Not one of the proper gangs – not like any of the Bloods or the Sun Crazie Ones or one of those. Just local kids. But they were really going wild.’
    â€˜I should’ve shot them,’ her father put in. ‘The trouble is, you do that, you shoot some punk, you get into trouble yourself, just for defending your own property.’
    Once they had filled two baskets with bottles of water, Tyler hefted them up and carried them across to the counter. ‘Thanks, Mr Alvarez. How much do I owe you?’
    Maria’s father was totting up the number of bottles when there was a deafening crash at the front of the store. They all looked up in shock to see three or four young men in hoodies kicking at the security grille. They kicked at it six or seven times before they suddenly woke up to the fact that although the grille was drawn all the way across the front of the store, Mr Alvarez had left the padlock unlatched after he had let Tyler inside.
    With whoops and shouts, they started to shake and rattle and yank the grille open.
    Mr Alvarez picked up the phone from behind the counter and handed it across to Maria. ‘Call the cops,’ he told her, tersely. ‘Don’t take no for an answer. Tell them if they don’t come, somebody’s going to get themselves shot. Tyler – take Maria into the back of the store. Take this.’ He reached under the counter and handed Tyler a baseball bat with duct tape around the handle. Then he ducked down a second time and came up with a sawn-off shotgun.
    Maria said, ‘Papa –
don’t
!’
    But Mr Alvarez snapped, ‘Get in the back, Maria, you hear me? This is my store – my property! Nobody breaks in here and takes what is mine!’
    Tyler took hold of Maria’s arm and said, ‘Come on, Maria! Just dial nine-one-one! Your dad can handle this!’
    â€˜Papa!’ said Maria, as the hoods wrenched the grille back far enough to open up the door. They came strutting into the store, whooping and whistling, pushing over displays of cookies and cakes and baby-food, and dragging their hands all the way along the shelves so that scores of cans clattered on to the floor.
    â€˜Papa, don’t shoot them!’
    But Mr Alvarez was already pointing his shotgun at the hoods, and flicking off the safety-catch with his thumb.
    â€˜You get out! All of you, get out now, or else!
    â€˜Oh, Papa,