My Cousin's Keeper Read Online Free PDF Page A

name.
    Are you listening to me?
I replayed that voice from Dad’s birthday party and pictured the hand clenching Bon’s face. Both bits of memory were tied together, as tight as a knot. I couldn’t stop feeling uncomfortable about my aunt being here. I was used to Nan, Mom, Dad, and their friends, who asked us stuff about the things we liked, or who shared jokes with us and sometimes joined in our games. My aunt was a mixture of talkative light and unsettling shadow.
    Suddenly, her voice was raised. “How did
you
get here?”
    I heard Mom’s soothing voice saying something I couldn’t make out, before she called, “Kieran! Come here, please!”
    Bon was at our back steps, silent and staring.
    â€œI asked you a question,” Aunt Renee said to him.
    â€œI walked,” he replied. “I remembered the house and the way to get here.”
    â€œBon, it’s lovely to see you again,” Mom told him with a smile, before turning to her sister. “Renee, really, it’s fine. He’s very welcome. He and Kieran can do something together. Kieran?”
    â€œI was going to help Dad,” I said, my heart sinking. Dad’s shed was suddenly a quiet, welcome destination, though I wasn’t sure what I was going to help Dad with exactly.
    Mom shook her head firmly. “Renee and I are talking. You keep Bon company. Show him some computer games,” she suggested in an oddly bright voice.
    â€œMom,” I muttered a little desperately.
    Then she added, “Or go outside and kick a ball around. Go for a bike ride. There’re two bikes, after all, and a spare helmet he can wear.”
    I hesitated long enough for Mom to frown a silent reply, a do-it-or-else death stare.
    If Aunt Renee smelled of cigarettes, I knew from the first morning on the playground that Bon still had the scent of sweat and pee I’d noticed two years before. Which gave me at least one excuse not to get too close to him if it could be managed.
    Bon had not even said anything like hello. “I don’t have a bike,” he said to no one in particular. “I’ve never had a bike. Kids get those for Christmas.” He wore a blank, dreamy expression.
    â€œKids who behave themselves get presents,” Aunt Renee said to him, and though it sounded like an accusation, Bon did not reply.
    â€œ
Kieran
,”
Mom said a little more urgently.
    â€œWe’ve got a computer,” I said, telling him the obvious in a flat voice. “And there’re games and stuff.” Unwillingly, I led him inside in the direction of the computer.
Why me?
I groaned to myself, thinking that whenever a friend from school visited, there had been easy, funny talk and always something to go and do. At least a computer game could mean no conversation, and that maybe I could escape, which I did after a few minutes of showing Bon a few games and sites. I left him sitting silently at the computer and ducked out the front door and down the side driveway, so that Mom wouldn’t see that I had left Bon behind in the house.
    â€œAnother refugee,” Dad remarked when I turned up in his shed at the back end of the yard. He called his shed the Guys’ Room. It was where he kept his weight-lifting and gym equipment, his workbench, and his beer fridge. There were sports posters on the walls and a calendar with a bikini girl holding a pair of shock absorbers. Sometimes Dad would have friends visiting. Ant and Split Pin were my favorites. Ant worked on his parents’ sheep farm ten miles out of town, where he was known as Anthony by his mom and dad. Dad called him a human database of funny stories. Split Pin was so tall he had to duck his head whenever he walked through a doorway, and he had once been a state champion soccer player. I had seen his real name, Sam Pinnock, in gold letters on the sports record board that hung on the wall inside the front doors at school. If Ant and Split Pin were