Forever Read Online Free PDF Page B

out for him; he wouldn’t be able to hear me. The lights he’d left on laid down a history of his comings and goings: through the kitchen, down the hall to his room, the downstairs bathroom, and into the living room where the sound system was. I momentarily considered tracking him down, but I didn’t have time to hunt for him as well as Grace. I found a flashlight in the cabinet by the fridge and a banana from the island, and headed toward the hall. I promptly tripped over Cole’s shoes, caked in mud, lying haphazardly in the doorway from the kitchen to the hall. I saw now that the kitchen floor was covered with dirt, the dull yellow lightsilluminating where Cole’s pacing had painted an ouroboros of filthy footprints in front of the cabinets.
    I rubbed a hand through my hair. I thought of a swearword but didn’t say it. What would Beck have done with Cole?
    I was reminded, suddenly, of the dog that Ulrik had brought home from work once, a mostly grown Rottweiler inexplicably named Chauffeur. It weighed as much as I did, was a bit mangy around the hips, and sported a very friendly disposition. Ulrik was all smiles, talking about guard dogs and Schutzhund and how I would grow to love Chauffeur like a brother. Within an hour of its arrival, Chauffeur ate four pounds of ground beef, chewed the cover off a biography of Margaret Thatcher — I think it ate most of the first chapter as well — and left a steaming pile of crap on the couch. Beck said, “Get that damn langolier out of here.”
    Ulrik called Beck a Wichser and left with the dog. Beck told me not to say Wichser because it was what ignorant German men said when they knew they were wrong, and a few hours later, Ulrik returned, sans Chauffeur. I never did sit on that side of the couch again.
    But I couldn’t kick Cole out. He had nowhere to go but down from here. Anyway, it wasn’t so much that Cole was intolerable. It was that Cole, undiluted, taken neat with nothing to cut through the loudness of him, was intolerable.
    This house had been so different when it had been filled with people.
    The living room went silent for two seconds as the song ended and then the speakers busted out another NARKOTIKA song. Cole’s voice exploded through the hall, louder and brasher than real life:
    Break me into pieces
    small enough to fit
    in the palm of your hand, baby
    I never thought that you would save me
    break a piece
    for your friends
    break a piece
    just for luck
    break a piece
    sell it sell it
    break me break me
    My hearing wasn’t as sensitive as it was when I was a wolf, but it was still better than most people’s. The music was like an assault, something physical to push past.
    The living room was empty — I’d turn the music off when I got back downstairs — and I jogged through it to get to the stairs. I knew there was an assortment of medicines in the downstairs bathroom’s cabinet, but I couldn’t get to them. The downstairs bathroom with its tub held too many memories for me to get through. Luckily, Beck, sensitive to my past, kept another store of medicines in the upstairs bathroom where there was no tub.
    Even up here, I could feel the bass vibrating under my feet. I shut the door behind me and allowed myself the small comfort of rinsing the dried car-washing suds from my arms before I opened the mirror-fronted cabinet. The cabinet was full of the vaguely distasteful evidence of other people, as most shared bathroom cabinets were. Ointments and other people’s toothpaste and pills for terms and conditions that no longer applied and hairbrushes with hair not my color in the bristles and mouthwash that had probably expired two years before. I should clean it out. I would get around to it.
    I gingerly removed the Benadryl, and as I closed the cabinet, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My hair was longer than I’d ever let it get before, my yellow eyes lighter than ever against