Mystic River Read Online Free PDF

You’re gonna be a heartbreaker.”
    “Uh, okay,” Jimmy said, and they both laughed.
    “You could talk a little more,” his mother said.
    You could, too, Jimmy wanted to say.
    “That’s okay, though. Women like the silent type.”
    Over his mother’s shoulder, Jimmy saw his father stumble out of the house, his clothes wrinkled and his face puffy with sleep or booze or both. His father looked at the party going on in front of him like he couldn’t imagine where it had come from.
    His mother followed Jimmy’s gaze and when she looked back at him, she was worn out again, the smile gone so completely from her face, you’d have been surprised she knew how to make one. “Hey, Jim.”
    He loved it when she called him “Jim.” It made him feel like they were in on something together.
    “Yeah?”
    “I’m real glad you didn’t get in that car, baby.” She kissed his forehead and Jimmy could see her eyes glistening, and then she stood up and walked over to some of the other mothers, kept her back to her husband.
    Jimmy looked up and saw Dave in the window staring down at him again, a soft yellow light on somewhere in the room behind him now. This time, Jimmy didn’t even try to wave back. With the police and reporters all gone now, and the party so deep in swing no one probably remembered what had started it, Jimmy could feel Dave in that apartment, alone except for his crazy mother, surrounded by brown walls and weak yellow lights as the party throbbed on the street below.
    And he was glad, too, once again, that he hadn’t gotten in that car.
    Damaged goods. That’s what Jimmy’s father had said to his mother last night: “Even if they find him alive, the kid’s damaged goods. Never be the same.”
    Dave raised a single hand. He held it up by his shoulderand didn’t move it for a long time, and as Jimmy waved back, he felt a sadness weed its way into him and go deep and then spread out in small waves. He didn’t know whether the sadness had something to do with his father, his mother, Miss Powell, this place, or Dave holding that hand so steady as he stood in the window, but whatever caused it—one of those things or all of them—it would never, he was sure, come back out again. Jimmy, sitting on the curb, was eleven years old, but he didn’t feel it anymore. He felt old. Old as his parents, old as this street.
    Damaged goods, Jimmy thought, and let his hand drop back to his lap. He watched Dave nod at him and then pull down the shade to go back inside that too-quiet apartment with its brown walls and ticking clocks, and Jimmy felt the sadness take root in him, nestle up against his insides as if finding a warm home, and he didn’t even try to wish it back out again, because some part of him understood that there was no point.
    He got up off the curb, not sure for a second what he meant to do. He felt that itchy, antsy need to either hit something or do something new and nutty. But then his stomach growled, and he realized he was still hungry, so he headed back for another hot dog, hoping they still had some left.
     
    F OR A FEW DAYS , Dave Boyle became a minor celebrity, and not just in the neighborhood, but throughout the state. The headline the next morning in the Record American read LITTLE BOY LOST/LITTLE BOY FOUND . The photograph above the fold showed Dave sitting on his stoop, his mother’s thin arms draped across his chest, a bunch of smiling kids from the Flats mugging for the camera on either side of Dave and his mother, everyone looking just happy as can be, except for Dave’s mother, who looked like she’d just missed her bus on a cold day.
    The same kids who’d been with him on the front page started calling him “freak boy” within a week at school.Dave would look in their faces and see a spite he wasn’t sure they understood any better than he did. Dave’s mother said they probably got it from their parents and don’t you pay them any mind, Davey, they’ll get bored and forget