Living with the hawk Read Online Free PDF

in the house next door, and now I could see the guys looking down at her, still laughing, all of them with their dicks out.
    They were pissing on her.
    â€œShut the hell up!” A man’s voice, loud and angry. “Or I’m calling the cops.”
    Their hands were at their flies then, stuffing their dicks inside their pants, but they were laughing still, gasping, hysteria throbbing in their voices as they bumped against each other and backed away. They turned around then and ran for the door.
    The last one inside was my brother.

    I lay in bed for hours that night before I finally fell asleep, and then it was tossing and turning, strange dreams that left me terrified and sweating, but I must have dropped into a deep sleep at some point because the floorboards in the hall outside my door always creaked, the sound like the squeal of a mouse having its tail stepped on, and some time that night my brother walked down the hall, across those boards, and I never heard a thing. For a while, later on, I guess, I was trapped in a cave, darkness everywhere and bats wheeling around, you could hear their wings beating the black air, but it wasn’t a cave, it was a mine, and the shaft was shrinking, boulders tumbling down to fill it, the entrance blocked, detonations, rock torn from rock, everything collapsing, water pouring in, and my legs wouldn’t move, they were pinned beneath me, more explosions, barOOP, barOOP, and I couldn’t run away.
    I tried to roll over, but my legs were caught in something, the sheet, the sheet twisted and damp, my pyjama collar soaked — I was in my own bed, but the explosions kept coming at me, barOOP, barOOP, the whole house shaking. The room was dark, but when I turned my head I could see numbers glowing inches from my face, the time on my clock radio: 4:03. BarOOP! A pause. BarOOOP! Louder yet, the sound from the wall behind the headboard of my bed. The bathroom wall.
    And then I knew it was my brother vomiting. Well, let him suffer. He had it coming, pissing on that girl with all those other jerks. I could picture him on the bathroom floor, hanging on to the toilet bowl as if nothing else connected him with life, gasping for air, the stench of vomit all around him, heaving up the pain from deep within, dry heaves, and nothing coming, nothing but another string of phlegm. Then I heard my father’s voice, a mumble through the wall, but Blake just kept spewing.
    I knew what it must be like. A few hours before I’d watched the girl in the red sweater throwing up in Fosters’ back yard, my hand on her back, patting her, trying to comfort her. My hand wet with urine.
    After everyone had disappeared into the house, I’d squatted down beside her, seen that the grass around her face was already stained with vomit. She must’ve been throwing up before she passed out. I reached for her, touched her shoulder.
    â€œAre you — okay?” Stupid question. She was anything but okay.
    No answer. I gave her shoulder a little squeeze, felt her begin to stir. Then she hunched up beneath my hand, a long moan, and she was throwing up again, her body wrung with what I could only call convulsions. I had to do something here.
    â€œWhat the hell is this?”
    When I looked up, I recognized the dark hulk of Ivan Buchko on the back porch. He jumped down and strode toward us, his step quick and purposeful, and I thought, he isn’t drunk, maybe he can help me.
    â€œShe’s awful sick,” I said. “We need to get her home.”
    â€œMan, she pissed herself.”
    I hesitated. “Yeah, I guess so.” I couldn’t tell him — heck, I could hardly believe it myself. “You got a car?”
    â€œYeah.” He shook his head. “I’m not taking her like that.”
    She had quit throwing up now, but she started to cry, sobs and hiccups mixed together, her body shaking on the grass.
    â€œWe can’t just leave her here.”
    Ivan