M. T. Anderson Read Online Free PDF

fact, the thing that made me pissy was when they couldn’t help me at all, so I was just lying there, and couldn’t play any of the games on the feed, and couldn’t chat anyone, and I couldn’t do a fuckin’ thing except look at that stupid boat painting, which was even worse, because now I saw that there was no one on the boat, which was even more stupid, and was kind of how I felt, that the sails were up, and the rudder was, well, whatever rudders are, but there was no one on board to look at the horizon.

I had a few pages cached, from right before the feed stopped. I flipped through them sadly. I went back and forth between them. One was a message from the crazy asshole, which said,
You have been hacked by the Coalition of Pity.
The other was a good sale at Weatherbee & Crotch, which, by this time, I had probably missed. It was too bad, because I would have liked to have been able to take the opportunity to check out these great bargains, for example they had a trim-shirt with side pockets that I thought I probably would have bought, except it only came in sand, persimmon, and vetch.

It was Saturday night. The main lights were out. It had been a day since any of us had heard from the feed. Our parents were probably already on the moon, and were coming to the hospital the next morning.
    For most of the day since we woke up after the attack, we had stared at the walls. We’d been sitting in our beds, and we tapped our feet on the rails. None of us could get the tune of “I’ll Sex You In” out of our heads. Someone kept starting it up, and then the others would swear and tell them to shut up. Then we couldn’t help ourselves, and we’d start to tap it out on our trays with a spork.
    Link had finally woken up, and he paced up and down the floor. Loga came by during the afternoon and she talked to all of us, and she kept saying, “Ohhhhh! Ohhhhh!” in this sorry tone of voice, which was nice, except that then she would pause and we could tell she was m-chatting all the news back to our friends on Earth. Occasionally, she’d forget and she’d say out loud to no one, “Omigod! Yes! Right here!” or “Hello . . . ?” or whatever it was she was saying in her head. She would laugh at jokes we couldn’t hear.
    Once, she went to the bathroom, casual-like, and came back with her hair parted a different place. Calista and Quendy watched her.
    Later, without saying anything, they went and did theirs different like that, too.
    Marty was sometimes saying his usual kind of thing, which was like, “Fuck this shit. Fuck this.” He wanted to be out playing basketball or something.
    There was nothing to do. Violet stared at her hands in her lap. I looked over at her. I smiled, you know, supportive. She looked at me and then went back to staring at her hands.
    Now it was night, and all the big lights were out. We were lying there. There were machines that were taking our pulse and shit. We were all supposed to be sleeping.
    I heard Violet walk across the floor and head for the bathroom. A few minutes later, I heard her walking back.
    “Hey,” I said.
    “Yeah. Hey,” she said. She stopped.
    “You can . . . ,” I said. I pulled myself up against the pillows. “Why don’t you sit down for a sec?”
    She sat down in the chair by my bed. I could see the curve of her nose against my pulse, which was green and bumpy.
    We sat there for a little while. I was thinking,
This is nice. We’re just sitting here. We don’t have to say anything.
    I felt real contented. I lay my head back on my pillow.
    I looked over at her face. I could see the light from my heartbeat on her tears.
    I said. “You’re . . . hey. You’re crying.”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “You don’t . . .” I didn’t know how to say what I wanted. I tried, “You don’t seem like a crier.”
    “No,” she said.
    We sat. Now the silence wasn’t very good. Her head was low. I could see the curve of her cheek against my brain waves, which were red and