More Than This Read Online Free PDF Page B

crossed, he turns back to his house.
    It sits there, waiting for him, a memory asking to be reentered.

I’ll have to see ,
Seth tapped onto the screen of his phone.
U know how my mum is .
    It’s mOm, U homo
, Gudmund wrote back.
And what’s her problem now?
    B in History .
    Ur mom gets upset about GRADES?!?! What f-ing century does she live in?
    Not this one & only girls text this much, U homo
.
    Seth smiled to himself as his phone immediately vibrated with an incoming call. “I said I’d have to see,” he whispered into it.
    “What’s the matter with her?” Gudmund said. “Doesn’t she trust me?”
    “Nope.”
    “Ah, well, she’s smarter than I thought.”
    “She’s smarter than everyone thinks. That’s why she’s always so pissed off. Says she’s lived here eight years and everyone still talks to her in a loud, slow voice, like she’s a foreigner.”
    “She
is
a foreigner.”
    “She’s English. Same language.”
    “Not really. Why are you talking so quiet?”
    “They don’t know I’m awake yet.”
    Seth took a moment to listen from his bed. He could hear his mother stomping around, probably trying to find Owen’s clarinet. Owen, meanwhile, was in the next bedroom over, playing a computer game that involved lots of dramatic guitar solos. And every once in a while there was a banging from the kitchen downstairs, where his father was ten months into a three-month DIY project. Typical Saturday morning stuff, so, no, thank you, he’d stay here as long as no one remembered he –
    “SETH!” he heard shouted from down the hall.
    “Gotta go,” he said into the phone.
    “You have to come, Sethy,” Gudmund insisted. “How many times do I need to say it? My parents are out of town. It’s like a commandment to party. And we’re not going to get many more chances. Senior year, dude, and then we’re out of here.”
    “I’ll do what I can,” Seth said hurriedly as his mother’s feet came pounding toward his door. “I’ll call you back.” He hung up as she flung the door open. “Jesus,” he said, “knock much?”
    “You have no secrets from me,” she answered, but with a forced half-smile, and he could tell she was trying to apologize, in her bizarrely hostile way.
    “You have no idea what secrets I have,” he said.
    “I don’t doubt that for a second. Get up. We have to go.”
    “Why do I have to come?”
    “Have you seen Owen’s clarinet?”
    “He’ll be fine for an hour –”
    “Have you
seen
it?”
    “Are you even listening to me?”
    “Are you listening to
me
? Where’s Owen’s goddamn clarinet?”
    “I don’t goddamn know! I’m not his goddamn butler!”
    “Watch your mouth,” she snapped. “You know he loses track of things. You know he’s not as on the ball as you. Not since –”
    She didn’t finish her sentence. Didn’t even trail off, just stopped dead. Seth didn’t need to ask what she meant.
    “I haven’t seen it,” he said, “but I still don’t see why I have to come and just sit there.”
    His mother spoke with angry patience, enunciating every syllable. “Be. Cause. I. Want. To. Go. For. A. Run.” She dangled the running shoes she was holding. “I get precious little time to myself as it is, and you know Owen gets upset if he’s left there alone with Miss Baker –”
    “He’s fine,” Seth said. “He puts it on because he likes the attention.”
    His mother sucked in her breath. “Seth –”
    “If I do it, can I stay over at Gudmund’s tonight?”
    She paused. His mother didn’t like Gudmund much, for reasons she couldn’t quite explain herself. “I don’t even like his name,” he’d overheard her saying to his father one night in the next room. “What kind of name is Gudmund? He’s not Swedish.”
    “Gudmund is a Norwegian name, I think,” his father had said, not paying much attention.
    “Well, he’s not that either. Not even in the way Americans go on about being Irish or Cherokee. Honestly, a whole population who