Set This House in Order Read Online Free PDF Page B

Julie.
    â€œHere,” Adam offered, “I’ll show you what I mean. Just let me have the body for a second…”
    I should have refused; even a month out of the lake, I knew better than to trust Adam’s generosity. But he sounded so self-assured, and I was so at a loss, that I stepped back into the pulpit and let him take over.
    Now it was Julie’s turn to be startled. People who have never seen a switch before often expect some dramatic physical transformation, like a werewolf sprouting hair and fangs under a full moon. In reality it’s much more subtle—the body doesn’t change, just the body language, which can actually be a lot more unsettling. I’m naturally a little shy, and though I try to keep eye contact for courtesy’s sake, I have what Aunt Sam calls “a politely unintrusive gaze.” Adam, of course, is the opposite of unintrusive. The first thing he did when he took the body from me was flash Julie his crudest adolescent leer. I could tell by the way she reacted: she stopped smiling and shifted back defensively in her seat. It was my first hint that I’d just made a big mistake.
    â€œHello, Julie,” said Adam, in a silky voice that even spooked me a little. “Watch closely.” He lifted up his right arm and waggled it in the air. “Nothing up this sleeve…” He did the same with his left arm. “…and nothing up this one.” He lowered his arms and brought them together, hands clasping around the sides of the beer pitcher. “Watch…”
    â€œOh no,” I said. “Adam! No!”
    The beer: of course: it was the beer that he wanted. Alcohol is against the rules of the house, but Adam doesn’t care about the rules—he is Gideon’s son, after all. And he loves drinking, even more than he loves Playboy.
    As he brought the pitcher to his lips I tried to wrest the body back from him, but he was determined to hang on until he finished. He didn’t need to hold me off for long. Blitz-drinking is one of Adam’s most refined “talents”: he just threw his head back, and the stout in the pitcher slid out of sight like rainwater washing down a drainpipe, with no pause for swallowing.
    â€œAaaaaaahhhh—” Adam slammed the empty pitcher down on the table. He drained the glasses next, grabbing Julie’s in one fist and mine in the other, tossing them back as if they were no more than thimble-sized, andending with a flourish: “TA-DAAAA!!!” Then he leaned forward across the table, opened his mouth and belched explosively, right in Julie’s face.
    And that was all. Cackling hysterically at his joke, Adam fled the body and ran back into the house, leaving me to deal with the aftermath.
    Julie looked as though she’d been slapped: she sat bolt upright, palms flat and rigid against the edge of the table as if frozen in the act of pushing away. From inside the house I could hear my father roaring in fury, and beneath the roar a door slam as Adam, still cackling, barricaded himself in his room, but that was all very distant. The immediate universe was made up of Julie and her wide-eyed expression of shock.
    I jerked back in my own seat and my hands flew up to my mouth, as if I could somehow cram Adam’s belch back inside. I would have given a lot to be able to abandon the body myself just then, to push it and the whole situation off on another soul; but that wasn’t allowed. I could call on Seferis to handle physical threats, but coping with embarrassment was my own responsibility—even when it wasn’t my fault. House rule.
    â€œI’m so sorry…” The words came rushing out, muffled by the hands still pressed to my mouth. “I’m so sorry, Julie—”
    Julie blinked and came back to life. “That was Adam?” she asked me.
    I nodded. “That was Adam.”
    â€œYou were right,” she said. “He is a