Loving Emily Read Online Free PDF Page B

crawdads,” he told the rest of the guys. “At camp.”
    “They look like lobsters,” he went on, “only bigger.”
    “Bigger?” Jonathan said. “I thought crawdads were small.”
    “No, they’re huge,” Michael said, straight-faced. “How big was that one crawdad you caught, Ryan? Ten, twelve pounds?”
    “At least,” I said.
    “Not only are they huge, but they’re
mean
,” Michael said. “This big one chased Ryan around the dock and then clamped his claw on his big toe and wouldn’t let go.”
    “You’re so full of it, Weston,” one of the guys said.
    “No, it’s true,” I said. “Except Michael got his facts mixed up. It wasn’t me who got chased around—it was Michael. And it wasn’t his toe the crawdad bit—it was his dick.”
    The guys started laughing. Kyle, down at the end, threw a bread roll at Michael, who caught it and lobbed it back to Kyle.
    “Ryan, my dick’s way too big for a twelve pound crawdad to get his claw around. It must have been
your
dick you’re thinking of.”
    Jonathan jumped in. “Michael, you’re
doubly
full of it. Although the part about Ryan’s dick, I’d believe.”
    After we’d pooled our money to pay the bill, Michael got up from the table.
    “I’m gonna find you one, too,” he said to me. He asked a waiter, then walked around past a few empty tables until he found an abandoned key chain and handed it to me.
    “Now we each have one,” Michael had said. “To remember the crawdads by.”
    I get out of bed, go to my desk, and open the drawer. There it is, sitting in the paper clip cup. My crawdad. I wonder if Michael had kept his.
    I’ll never see him again. I climb back into bed with the crawdad in my hand and lie there for a long time, barely moving, barely even breathing, it seems like. I lie there for hours, staring at the ceiling, until I finally fall asleep.

Chapter 7
    J onathan must have done his job telling people, because I’m accosted in the school parking lot on Monday morning as soon as I get out of my car. First, it’s by some girls from the varsity soccer team – Mamie, Jessica, Lauren, and… the last one is Katie, I think. Their faces are red and soggy from crying.
    Maybe I should have stayed home from school after all, the way my parents suggested. But I’d wanted to keep busy, to stop myself from thinking.
    “Ryan, what happened on Saturday?” It’s Mamie talking.
    “Michael had kind of a lot to drink that night,” I begin.
    “He wasn’t just drinking!” Lauren says. “I saw him snorting coke in the parking lot. That new guy was daring him to do a second line.”
    Heat fills my chest and throat. “Did Michael do it?” I ask.
    Lauren nods.
    A crowd is gathering around us: three guys from the old gang at the Westside Academy for Boys, where Michael and I went to elementary school; Brent and Oliver, who Michael and I know from freshman English; and a couple of other kids who I don’t know that well.
    “Where did you go with him, Ryan?”
    “Into a stairwell. I stayed with him up until the very end. But I had to leave him for a minute, and that’s when he gave me the slip.”
    Emily floats through my mind, small and out of focus, then drifts away. Anger pulses through me, anger at Chase and at myself.
    The bell rings for class. Our group migrates indoors, with me still trapped in the center like the yolk of an egg. As we enter the building, the cluster of people around me finally breaks up, but I’m still not free.
    In front of me is Ballbuster Anderson, our headmistress. She’s really small, but she’s tough as beef jerky. As usual she looks like this butch military official, standing there in one of her weird man suits. It’s navy with brass buttons, but pint-sized. She wears it with a white button down shirt, and something hanging around her neck. A scarf, maybe.
    “Hey, Miss Anderson.” I keep replaying that evening in my mind, like a video, except I keep changing the parts I don’t like. So many small