Playing Tyler Read Online Free PDF

tells me that she wants to.
    Shit. Do I push it? “You want to give me your number, though.” She blushes. Blushes. Over me. Awesome.
    â€œNot really,” she says. But her voice is weak. Like she doesn’t really mean it. I hope she doesn’t really mean it.
    She turns and gives me a questioning look. As she walks away, down towards the bus stop, I feel light. Finally, I’ve met a girl who gets gaming, gets me , and she’s smoking hot. I pull out my phone and send Alpha and Peanut a quick message telling them that I actually met SlayerGrrl.
    Then I start my search.

 
    CHAPTER 4
    FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21
    TYLER
    Mom jumps when she sees me in the hall. Coming out of the bathroom in my pajamas.
    â€œTyler, oh, I didn’t realize you were home,” she says. She’s always surprised to see me. Even at midnight.
    â€œI brought you a sandwich for dinner like five hours ago, Mom,” I say.
    â€œOh.” Her eyes fix on some speck of dust or something on the wall. Looking past me. Again. “That’s right, you did. I was finishing up some work on this case and, well, thanks.”
    She’s still in her power suit from work. Makes her look like a woman who is kickass. She is kickass. At work, anyway. Always traveling for some big thing. At midnight, she just looks weird. “You should get changed Mom, it’s late.”
    She looks back to me again. Like she’s already forgotten that I’m there. She smiles, that smile that doesn’t reach anywhere but her lips. The smile that isn’t really a smile. More of a muscle memory thing. “Right.”
    I hug her. Hold her small body in close, careful not to get her blond hair stuck in the buttons of my shirt. She needs to be hugged sometimes. To remember that I’m here and that I love her and sometimes, sometimes when she hugs me back, when she cries, I think that she’s Mom again. That she’s who she was before. The mom that would take Brandon and me roller-skating every weekend in winter, who held my hand when we did the hokey-pokey, who would lift the limbo bar up higher so I could get under and feel like one of the big kids. “Love you, Mom. Go to sleep, OK?”
    Her eyes are cloudy. Distant. Someplace else. “Love you too, Tyler.” She says the words. Soft, hollow, sad. And I know that she wants to mean them, but doesn’t remember how.
    I guess I should go check and make sure she actually ate the sandwich that I made for her. Sometimes she takes it and just leaves it on her desk. She forgets. That’s why she’s so thin. Not good, being so thin. Not healthy.
    I hear Mom close the door to her room. No. Not going to check. I can check to make sure she eats breakfast before school. Throwing myself down on the bed, I stretch. Nice bed. Soft.
    Brandon and I would take this mattress off of the bed, drag it over to his room and build forts. We’d grab every blanket in the house. Raid the linen closet. We’d make these crazy-big forts, with secret passages and libraries stocked with pillows and flashlight and comic books. Mom never got mad, she used to stomp on the floor and pretend to be a big bad wolf, shake the sides of the fort. Brandon and I would scream and laugh and beg her not to blow our house down. She would laugh. Brandon would laugh. Sometimes when I close my eyes I can remember the sound.
    I was thirteen the first time I found Brandon.
    Unconscious. On the floor of the bathroom. He wouldn’t wake up. I kept shaking him, listening to see if he was breathing. Then there was that noise. That noise Mom made. The one that was low in her throat as she pulled his head into her chest and started rocking. Running her hands through his hair and crying. Crying for help. Crying for God, and rocking. She couldn’t do anything but hold him and cry and lie to him. Tell him he would be fine. I picked up the phone, called 911. I waited. Waited while they loaded him in the