Life Happens Next Read Online Free PDF

happy for him.”
    What!
    Oh, man!
    Debi and me ? Is that Ally’s idea of a great match? Debi is a forty-one-year-old, five-foot-two, eyes-of-blue, 220-pound lady with Down syndrome and the mind of a five-year-old. And I am, by all outward appearances, the drooling fourteen-year-old idiot in the wheelchair wearing a diaper. Sounds to me like a marriage made in developmental disability hell.
    If I could talk, I’d scream, “Damn it Ally, it’s you I want!” If I could grab a butcher knife, I’d slit my throat. If I could get myself to the top of the Space Needle, I’d take a header down to the concrete, seven hundred feet below. But of course I can’t do any of these things. All I can do is sit here and, against all odds, actually feel worse than I did ten minutes ago.

10
    A couple more miserable days have dragged by. It’s almost 7:30 in the evening. Dinner is over. Cindy and Paul are upstairs in their bedrooms, supposedly “studying” although I hear a lot of music clashing up there, Mozart from Cindy’s room and hip-hop from Paul’s. Mom is still messing around in the kitchen.
    Debi is sitting in the family room staring at me. And I mean staring . I never see her blink even once. It seems like Debi is trying to figure something out. Her focus is amazing. But I’m not sure if it’s intentional or just random staring, whether I am in her thoughts or if she is in some sort of strange blank zone. It makes me wonder, what’s up with her?
    After about half an hour of this weird gawking, Mom comes into the living room and says, “Hi, Debi.”
    Debi’s concentration breaks. She looks at Mom and answers, “Dat’s my name, don’t wear it out,” and laughs.
    Mom laughs too and now reminds Debi that her dog is coming tonight.
    Debi looks at Mom and says, “Yeth, Wusty,” turns, and walks into the foyer and plops herself down on the bench in front of the door.
    Thirty minutes later a car pulls into the driveway.
    Debi yells, “Wusty’s here!” My mother helps her unlock the door.
    â€œWUSTY!” Debi yells.
    I hear a growl and a ripping sound and now a man’s voice. “Gosh,” he says apologetically, “Sorry about your screen door.”
    Mom quickly answers, “That’s all right, it needed replacing anyway—”
    Her words are cut off as Rusty tears into the house, claws clattering on the hardwood, whining and barking like a maniac. I can barely even make out the thump of Paul’s feet hitting the stairs as he comes to see what all the commotion is about, or his voice calling over the chaos, “This must be Rusty!”
    The man says loudly to Paul, “I wouldn’t pet him until he has a chance to—” He stops in midsentence, and I hear Paul’s voice, “Rusty boy, who that good boy?”
    The man speaks again. “Wow, he seems to like you.”
    I can hear Rusty’s collar jingling and tail thumping on the hardwood. Paul laughs, slapping the dog’s sides and talking to him. “Who that good boy? You that Rusty boy!”
    Mom says, “Hi, Rusty.” And now, again, the sound of the dog’s claws as they clatter, scratch, and claw over the floor in his effort to run.
    Debi cries, “WUSTY, SIT.”
    But I can tell by the noise that he’s sure not sitting.
    The man says, “Calm down, Rusty,” but the dog seems to ignore him, too. The man explains, “He’s a smart dog, but he’s got a bit of nervous aggression and doesn’t take to new environments or new people all that well.” He adds, “I’m surprised he likes this young man so much.”
    Mom says, “My son Paul.”
    The man says, “Jack Yurrik. Nice to meet you both.”
    Paul answers, “Nice to meet you, too.”
    â€œWUSTY,” Debi cries again, and now the sound of Rusty’s claws grows closer to me.
    I happen to be