Falling From the Sky Read Online Free PDF

time, at the edge of the reservation. Didn’t get enough business to stay open, though,” he says. “My grandfather took some stuff from it before they shut it down. He wanted to keep as much of our history as he could.”
    “What did they do with the rest of it?” I ask.
    “It’s locked away in the old museum,” Micah says. “It’s all classified stuff, though. I’ve never even seen what all they have, and it’s kind of unfair since I am a Jocolnu native. That’s probably where they keep the zombie legends. I’d do anything to find out the real stories.”
    He stares at the display for a moment before he turns and walks down the hallway, motioning for me to follow. His bedroom is at the end of the hall, and it feels more comfortable than the living room. Clean clothes are stacked up in front of his dresser, some with hangers inside the shirts, like they were bound for his closet but never made the actual journey. Xbox game cases cover his carpet. It reminds me of my own bedroom back home.
    “Make yourself at home,” Micah says.
    He tosses me a game controller and digs through a mess of wires to hook it into the box.
    I lean back on his bed. It’s so much better than the beds at camp. It actually feels like a bed rather than a stone cot. The black sheets are worn, unlike those stale hospital sheets at Dunson Hills. The painting above the bed catches my attention, and I roll onto my stomach to see it right side up. It’s a graffiti painting of a city skyline with red streaks across the sky, forming a sunset. The buildings are gray outlined in silver with bright yellow and orange windows. The initials TRL are scribbled across the bottom corner.
    “Okay, see if you can log in,” Micah says.
    I sit up and grab the game controller beside me. Nothing registers on the screen regardless of which button I press.
    Micah sighs. “That’s Abby’s apple juice controller. Toss it here.”
    I toss it to him, and he unplugs it from the box.
    “She spilled apple juice in one of them. I can’t ever remember which one. It’s this one, obviously. I’ve got others in Zoey’s old room. May take me a few minutes to find them, though,” he says.
    He takes the defective controller with him and closes his bedroom door on his way out. I stand up and walk over to the dresser to get a better glimpse of the photographs tucked into the edges of the mirror. Abby, Jade, and his sister Zoey take up most of them. There’s an older couple in one of them, probably his grandparents. A few Native American kids sit on rocks at the river in another. But there’s one hidden behind a professional five-by-seven of Abby and Jade.
    It’s a picture of Micah. And another guy. It looks like it was taken at a zoo. There are hot pink flowers in the background. And flamingos standing in murky water. Micah and the other guy look too friendly to be just friends. It reminds me of the picture I have of Samantha and me on my phone. We took it right after we started dating, when she was still hot and I wasn’t a train wreck.
    I tuck the photo back into its hiding place and sit on the bed. Micah returns with a handful of Xbox controllers. He has more than one person ever should.
    “Where’d you get all those?” I ask.
    “I stole them,” he replies. He looks at me and waits for my reaction. I say nothing, and he laughs.
    “I’m kidding,” he says. “Zoey’s dating a guy who gets his hands on a lot of devices. He doesn’t like Xbox, though. So I get them.”
    I force a smile. “My girlfriend hates Xbox. She just doesn’t see how it can be fun.”
    Micah tosses me a new controller and unwraps a stick of blue rock candy that he grabbed off his dresser.
    “My ex was the same way,” he says, shoving the candy into his mouth mid-sentence.
    My gut feeling says the guy in the picture is his ex, so I pry for more details.
    “Samantha thinks it’s stupid,” I say. “She’d rather be shopping.”
    Micah sits on the bed next to me and tabs