Living with the hawk Read Online Free PDF Page A

some of them getting ground into an area rug by the couch, dark liquid spilled on the tile in one corner of the room. “Uh-huh, the place is quite a mess.”
    â€œHe’ll be grounded for a month,” she said. “You want to dance?”
    â€œI’m not much of a dancer.”
    â€œWho’s going to notice here? Come on. All you have to do is shake.”
    She grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me away from the doorway at the bottom of the stairs. I managed to get rid of my bottle of beer, setting it on a divider by the stairs. Nobody would think a thing about it. The floor was so crowded, you kept bumping someone else, but I discovered it wasn’t hard to dance, the beat so loud you kind of felt it, like a drum inside your torso, your feet automatically picking up the rhythm. She was dancing with me, just an inch or so away, looking dreamy-eyed, smiling up at me. Still, I felt like a nerd.
    Later on, quite a while later, she stopped dancing, said something to me, but we were right beside the boom box, I couldn’t hear a thing.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œGot to go to the can.”
    She pushed through the dancers, heading for a door in the corner of the basement. Feeling stupid, out there by myself, couples gyrating all around, I went after her. She turned the knob, but the door wouldn’t open. Someone had beat her to it. She stood in front of the door, the music blaring behind us, and pretty soon, she was bouncing from one foot to the other, like a little kid who’s really got to go, but all the while her feet kept perfect time to the rhythm of the music. I had to smile at that. She was about as sophisticated as a kindergarten grad, uh-huh, about as sophisticated as I was myself. After another minute, she pounded on the door. It still didn’t open. Then the music stopped, the room hushed in the sudden silence between tunes, and behind the bathroom door we heard someone throwing up.
    â€œI’m gonna pee myself,” she said. “Going to the upstairs can.” She turned and ran up the stairs.
    I was left standing by the bathroom, alone again in a room full of drunks, and it was time to go, man, I wished I was somewhere else. At home, at school, anywhere but here.
    That was when the bathroom door opened, the smell of vomit so thick I felt my stomach churn, and out came Neil Tucker, the other rookie on the team. He was staggering, his face a chalky white. “Gotta siddown,” he said. He bounced off a couple of dancers and collapsed into a chair, a girl I didn’t know trying to escape from the chair, but slow to move, pinned under him for a second until she managed to squirm loose.
    He’d walked right past me, so drunk he hadn’t even seen me.
    Time to get out of here, I thought, and started up the stairs. Laughter below me, shrieks, a girl yelling, “Look at all the puke.”
    I was out the back door like a shot, the noise and stink, all the crazy people left behind, night air wrapping around me, cool and fresh, but there was laughter in the back yard too, half a dozen guys in a line, arms flung around each other’s shoulders, all of them swaying slowly, side to side.
    When I saw Jordan Phelps at the end of the line, Todd Branton and Vaughn Foster beside him, I should have known enough to keep going. But no, I was curious, wanted to see what was going on.
    I stayed on the left side of the yard, crouching in the shadow of an overgrown caragana hedge, walking on the lawn where the grass would muffle any sound my footsteps made. It didn’t matter. The guys were laughing so loud they wouldn’t have heard me anyway. When I was parallel with them, I could see someone else — the girl in the red sweater, the one who’d fallen against me when I opened the back door, her breast an instant on my chest — she was sprawled on the grass in front of them, passed out, I guess, her sweater bright even in the dark yard. Just then a light came on