Fragile Beasts Read Online Free PDF Page A

that extend beyond the bleachers even if he doesn’t understand why.
    Maybe he even thought Klint might need him, not to provide any emotional support but simply as a reminder that there were more important things in life than life and death. There was next season.
    I only stayed in the living room long enough to see Shelby. I knew she would come right away, zipping along the road from Hamiltons’ in the new convertible her dad just bought for her.
    She’s a year older than me, a sophomore, and already has her permit. She’s not supposed to drive without an adult, but she doesn’t care since her dad’s Cam Jack, the J in J&P Coal, and there isn’t a cop anywhere around here who’d give her a ticket.
    She doesn’t live here or go to school here, but she willingly spends most of her summers and some of her weekends here with her aunt Candace, who’s supposed to be one of the meanest, ugliest, weirdest, richest old ladies to ever live. She calls our crappy little town “her country escape” and defends her aunt by claiming she’s misunderstood.
    Shelby sees greatness in small things and beauty in wreckage, and that’s why I love her.
    She only stayed a few minutes but cried hard the whole time and seemed more upset than I was.
    I don’t think losing Dad has become real to me yet. It’s still too easy forme to tell myself I’ll see him in the morning. We’ll make our regular Sunday brunch of eggs and sausage and bacon and ham steaks and Tater Tots and more eggs. I’m the cook, but Bill always brings the ham and sausage and Dad brews the coffee. Klint will eat everything I fry up along with a big bowl of Wheaties and a couple bananas, and Dad will make his joke about him being a friggin’ health nut because he ate a piece of fruit, but he’ll say it with a gleam of pride in his eyes. Afterward Dad and Bill will aid their digestion by driving to the beer distributor and then we’ll watch football for the rest of the day until I say I’ve got to go do my homework, even though I already did it and I really just want to be alone and draw for a while, and then Dad will make his joke about me being a friggin’ Rembrandt except there won’t be any gleam in his eyes this time.
    I could still believe that it would all happen again except for Shelby. She saw everything like she was watching a movie. She knew the plot. She knew there would be no regular Sunday for me tomorrow; she knew there would be no regular Sunday for me ever again.
    “Well, I’m gonna call your mom tonight,” Aunt Jen announces.
    I can’t help feeling a little excited. Mom will have to come for the funeral. I haven’t seen her for over two years. She’s only come back for one visit since she left, and it was a disaster. I talk to her on the phone now and then, but it’s not the same as seeing her. She’s always distracted on the phone.
    Maybe she’ll move back now. Maybe we can live with her again.
    I cross the room to Aunt Jen. It’s the closest I’ve been to her all night, and the combined scent of her sugar cookie perfume and cigarette smoke makes me feel sick to my stomach.
    “I suppose she’ll come and take you boys back to Arizona with her,” she continues and my heart plummets.
    “What do you mean?” I cry out. “This is Klint’s junior year. There are gonna be scouts looking at him. He’s gonna get scholarship offers.”
    “So what?” she says. “He can play baseball in Arizona.”
    Klint flicks me an astonished look. I know for him she might as well have suggested that he could play baseball on Mars.
    “You don’t understand,” I begin.
    “They just lost their dad,” Bill helps me out. “Don’t start talking about taking them from the only home they’ve ever known. Their school and all their friends.”
    “And the team,” I add.
    She steps closer to me, and I smell sour sweat beneath the smoke and perfume.
    “What do you boys think you’re gonna do? Live here by yourselves?”
    “Why not?” I