Over Your Dead Body Read Online Free PDF Page A

frown. “What do you mean, that’s it? That’s everything.”
    “The Withered are not trying to be happy,” I said, “they’re trying to gain … power, money, something. They’re trying to survive.”
    “That’s what happiness is, John. It’s how we survive. It’s why.”
    I sighed and rubbed my face with my hands. “Whatever. We can think on the way.” I grabbed my backpack, and looked down at Boy Dog. “Sorry, dog. You’ve got a long walk ahead.”

 
    3
    “What’s your favorite song?” asked Brooke. We’d found State Road 27 but hadn’t managed to catch a ride yet so we were just walking along—slowly, so Boy Dog could keep up.
    I answered without thinking. “‘Don’t Stop Believin’,’ by Foreigner.”
    Brooke laughed. “No it’s not.”
    “Sure it is,” I said. “Why not?”
    “The question isn’t why not,” she said. “It’s why. What on earth about that song makes you like it?”
    “You say that like it’s impossible to like,” I said. “That’s one of the most popular songs of all time.”
    “Is that why you picked it?”
    I glanced at her. “I picked it because I like it.”
    “So sing it.”
    “What, right now?”
    She spun slowly in the empty country road, looking at the wide fields and dusty trees that surrounded us. “Are you shy? We could sing at the top of our lungs and no one would even hear us. So prove it, big guy: if ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ is your favorite song, sing it.”
    “I don’t really sing.”
    Her eyes gleamed with mischief. “Then recite the words.”
    I sighed. “Fine, I don’t actually know the words.”
    “Of course you don’t,” she said proudly. “You didn’t even know who sang it—it’s Journey, not Foreigner, and I should know because I went to their concerts. Several of me did.”
    “They’re the same band,” I said, and then frowned. “Aren’t they?”
    “They’re not the same band, they’re super different.”
    “No, seriously,” I said, “isn’t it just, like, they changed their name? Like how Jefferson Airplane became Jefferson Starship.”
    “Wow,” said Brooke, “you’re going all in on classic rock, aren’t you?”
    “What else am I going to listen to, modern stuff? Have you heard modern stuff?”
    “More than you have,” said Brooke, “which is my whole point. You don’t listen to anything, classic or modern or anything else. I’m going to guess that somebody, probably your mom, listened to classic rock all the time, so you picked the most popular one as your ‘look how normal I am’ answer if anyone ever asked.”
    I sighed again and shrugged. “Fine, you got me. And it was my dad, actually—huge classic rock fan. I don’t know if you remember him very well.”
    “He left when we were little, right?” Brooke had lived two doors down from me since elementary school. “I liked him.”
    “Most people did,” I said. “People who didn’t live with him at least.” I heard a car behind us and turned to face it, sticking out my thumb to try to hitch a ride. The car ignored us, not even slowing down. I faced forward again, but Boy Dog had flopped down in the dirt by the side of the road, taking our brief pause as an excuse to rest. I gave him a moment.
    “I don’t know why I bother keeping up the pretense with you,” I said softly. “You know everything about me.”
    “I don’t think anyone knows everything about you,” said Brooke.
    “But you know that I’m … different,” I said. I don’t know why it was so hard to say; I used to wear it as a badge of honor. “I’m sociopathic. I don’t feel things the way you do, the way anybody does. Everything I do is fake, to make people think I’m normal. This morning I lied to the motel clerk, trying to convince him we came to town on a bus. He doesn’t care how we came to town. Some of the lies were to put him at ease and get info out of him, but even after he gave us the info I didn’t want him to know we were drifters. I