Fragile Beasts Read Online Free PDF

ask.
    “You’re kids.”
    “Klint turns seventeen in a couple months. Next year he’ll be eighteen. He’ll be an adult.”
    She throws back her streaky blond head and eyes me critically.
    “And what are you gonna live on? Is he gonna quit school and get a job? Are you?”
    I don’t have an answer for her. All I know is I can’t quit school and I can’t move. I have goals. I want to kiss Shelby Jack. I want to go to college even though I’ve never told anyone. I want to study art, not just think about it. I want to travel to other places, but Arizona’s not one of them.
    “It’s up to your mother,” she says. “You got no say in the matter.”
    I reach inside my pocket and finger Krystal’s shoe.
    I want my sister back but not at the expense of my brother.
    Klint stands up.
    “We’re not going anywhere,” he says. “If you talk to her, you can tell her that. Now why don’t you leave?”
    “Are you kicking me out?”
    “It’s my house.”
    She laughs sharply.
    “It’s gonna be the bank’s house in a couple days.”
    “Until then, it’s mine.”
    She grabs her purse and shakes it at him before sliding it over her bony brown arm.
    “You got some nerve little boy, talking to me like that.”
    He doesn’t respond. He stands his ground and looks right through her.
    She won’t fight him. Klint has an aura about him, the righteous power of the wrongfully condemned. Everyone recognizes it and respects it, but they don’t understand where it comes from. I do.
    He’s been held captive his entire life by something more precious and terrible than any of Dad’s lost plans or my stupid goals. Klint has a destiny.

CHAPTER TWO
    I ’ve never been to a funeral before. I guess that’s because I’ve never known a dead person before besides my grandma Bev who died when I was eleven. I probably should’ve gone to her funeral but I didn’t. Klint was playing in a tournament that weekend and even though Dad did everything he could to postpone the burial, he finally had to give in. “You can’t fight nature,” Bill had pointed out to him over a couple of beers on our back porch.
    Klint got a ride with his best friend, Tyler, and his family, and Dad made me go with him. I’ve never missed one of Klint’s games so it wasn’t exactly a strange request. He told me I shouldn’t feel bad about missing Grandma’s funeral. He said she’d want me to be with Klint because it was important for Klint to know he always had someone from the family there rooting for him. I almost laughed when Dad said that, but then I realized he was serious. I knew that Klint could care less if any of us were there. Half the time I don’t think he noticed if anyone was in the stands. Jessica Simpson could have strolled in front of the batter’s box, whipped her shirt up and flashed him, and Klint would have told her to “Move.”
    But Dad wanted me to go and I couldn’t say no. He took Grandma Bev’s death very hard, and the fact that he missed the tournament to see her get buried was one of the most powerful displays of love I’d ever seen. Even Mom was touched by it.
    Mom’s here. She got in last night. I thought she might come and see us right away but she didn’t. She just showed up at the funeral.
    She smiled at me when I went over to her, and gave me a hug, and ran her hand through my hair the way she used to, and told me she couldn’t believe how tall I was getting. I expected it to feel good, but the touch of her fingers on my scalp sent shocks of pain down my spine.
    I couldn’t help remembering the last time I saw her before she left. I was on my way to the school bus. I had slung my backpack over my shoulder and stopped to give her a hug while she held her cigarette and coffee cup up in the air trying not to get ashes on me.
    “I can’t believe you still want to hug me every morning,” she said. “I guess I should enjoy it ’cause in another year you’ll be a teenager and you won’t want me anywhere near