Stick Read Online Free PDF

said. He dropped the second can and it rolled toward his feet.
    â€œDon’t tell me those things blow up,” I said.
    â€œWhat? My sock?” Paul flipped his wet sock back at my face.
    I ducked.
    Bosten started laughing so hard, I thought he was going to pee himself.
    â€œWell,  they kind of do blow up,” Paul said. “This one’s a smoke grenade. Green fucking                     smoke.”
    â€œBitchin’!” Bosten crawled over on his hands and knees and put his face right down next to it.
    â€œFrancis says it will even go off underwater,” Paul explained. “He told me you could put it in a pool and it will turn the water                         green and still make smoke, too.”
    â€œAre you going to throw it in the ocean?” I asked.
    â€œLet’s throw it in the pool at Wilson.” Bosten laughed.
    I shook my head. “You’re going to get in trouble.”
    â€œI’m already going to get suspended for fucking up Ricky Dostal.”
    Paul grabbed my brother’s shoulder. “But wait.” He waved his hand over the second, slightly bigger canister. “This one’s called                                 a handpop. It launches a flare into the               sky                              and it floats down on a parachute.”
    Bosten had an almost religious look on his face. “Oh my God. That is so
    bitchin’!”
    â€œYou guys are going to blow your hands off,” I said.
    They just laughed at that.
    I stood back from them. I knew there was no way to talk Paul and Bosten out of doing something crazy. Something was definitely getting blown up at Pilot Point Beach tonight.
    â€œYou know what, Stick?” Paul said. “When we shoot this off, Francis says people are going to think it’s a fucking UFO.”
    â€œWow,” I said, as unenthusiastically as possible. “That’s exactly what I was hoping for.”
    Bosten scrambled to his feet. Paul’s towel stuck to him and trailed away from the seat of his jeans like some kind of comet tail, and he dug a hand down into his pocket as he followed his friend down the bank, toward the water’s edge.
    I heard a jangling sound.
    Bosten dropped the car keys at his feet.
    â€œHere. Go start the car, Stick.”
    What could I do? I tried telling myself it would be no big deal.
    We’d blown stuff up before, only we never shot anything five hundred feet into the air that would light up like a goddamned nuke over Seattle.
    I sat behind the wheel and watched Bosten and Paul laughing, bumping into each other down by the water. I put the shift into neutral and sighed and I turned the key.
    Dad would kill us both if he knew how many times Bosten made me drive him home.
    *   *   *
    I saw Paul drop the handpop at his feet, and I thought, Good, maybe it’s rolled into the water and he can’t find it . They were just screwing around, anyway, laughing and wrestling with each other. I wondered how anyone could ever enjoy smoking pot, if all it ever did to you was make you act stupid.
    I pulled the Penthouse magazine out from under the seat and studied the pictures by the light of the dashboard gauges. And just as I was settling back in wonder at that steamy bathtub scene, everything lit up, flashed by a sudden white-hot blast that was as bright as the sun.
    Through the windshield, it looked like an old black-and-white science fiction film, a grainy and distorted clip of Bosten and Paul slowly backing away from the shore, their shadows cast down upon the wet ground with a