Invincible Read Online Free PDF Page B

how her proud father felt about anyone seeing him like he was now. “I know you don’t want to see anyone. You don’t have a choice.”
    His gray eyes blazed with anger, and one cheek lifted as the side of his mouth turned down in a snarl. “No!”
    That was clear enough. But Flick was waiting in the visitors’ lounge down the hall. God knew how long the inquisitive nine-year-old could last in a hospital waiting room without getting into trouble. Kristin had warned Flick to behave herself and hurried to her father’s room to prepare him for seeing his granddaughter. She didn’t have a lot of time to argue with him.
    Her stomach knotted as she watched the once-invincible Harry Lassiter visibly struggle to say, “I ih e ere?”
    Why is she here?
    Kristin had debated whether to tell her father that Flick had gotten herself thrown out of school. It was one more thing he didn’t need to worry about. But she didn’t want to set a bad example by asking Flick to lie, and Flick would likely blurt it out anyway.
    â€œFlick was worried when you stopped emailing. She got herself thrown out of school so she could come find out what happened to you.”
    Kristin thought she saw the flicker of a smile cross half her father’s face. If so, it was the first since his stroke.
    He sighed audibly. “Aw igh.”
    â€œWell, all right,” Kristin said with a smile of her own, relieved that he’d given in so easily. “I’ll be right back. I left her—”
    â€œGramps!”
    Kristin turned to find Flick poised in the doorway, a look of horror on her face.
    â€œOw! Ow! Ow!” her father howled, creating a gar-goyle face that caused Flick to whimper, before he turned away with a sound of anguish, flailing with his one good hand under the sheet.
    Out! Out! Out!
    Kristin fought the urge to grab Flick and run—from her father, from her job, from her self-destructing life.
    But she stood her ground. Because in her head sheheard: Never run from a challenge. Remember, you’re invincible.
    â€œYou’re scaring Flick, Dad,” Kristin said in a firm voice. “Flick, come here,” she said in an equally firm voice.
    Flick tore fearful eyes from her grandfather’s supine body and stared dazed at her mother.
    â€œCome here,” Kristin repeated, holding out her hand to her daughter. “I know Gramps looks different. I would have prepared you, if you’d waited in the lounge. Because of his stroke, the right side of his face droops. That’s why he looks so…funny. So…weird. So…odd,” Kristin finished, after searching for the right word and never finding it.
    â€œDad, look at us,” she commanded her father. “I want Flick to see your face in repose.” His face would still look strange, but not so horrible as it had when he’d howled. Kristin kept a reassuring hand on Flick’s shoulder, to stop her in case she was tempted to run.
    Kristin caught the stab of betrayal in her father’s eyes as he slowly turned back to face his granddaughter.
    Grandfather and granddaughter stared at each other somberly for a full thirty seconds before her father said, “Iz oo, ik.”
    â€œI missed you, too, Gramps,” Flick said.
    â€œAir oo, uh?”
    â€œYeah,” Flick agreed. “You scared me pretty bad.”
    Kristin barely managed to avoid rolling her eyes. Trust Flick to be totally honest.
    â€œI’m okay now,” Flick continued. She left the securityof Kristin’s side and crossed to her grandfather, bracing her hands on the bed to lift herself up and plop her rump down next to his hips. “But your face does look bizarre.”
    Bizarre: Strikingly out of the ordinary. That was the word Kristin had been seeking. Trust Flick to root it out of her enormous vocabulary.
    Kristin glanced at her watch, a twenty-five-dollar Timex with a brown leather band that Flick had given