The Domino Effect Read Online Free PDF

thinking and the little I was saying.
    “What you said before, about my roommate,” I said slowly.
    “Oh, yes,” he caught on. “I’d assumed you would have known this already, but apparently your roommate, Mr. Brooks, will not be returning to Hamden Academy.”
    It sounded even better the second time.
    I thought about asking him to tell me again, I swear, but instead I had mercy on the guy and signed something on a clipboard, took a key to my single room and got right out of there. Going down the stairs, I squeezed the key in my palm and tried not to trip, though I could barely feel my feet.
    Even in all that excitement, I still noticed, on the floor in the stairwell, a milk crate full of trophies and stuff, with a big pair of ugly wrestling shoes on top. They were tied together, bright blue with some sparkled gold writing on the sides. I tried not to notice, but I did. There was something about them that couldn’t be ignored.

     
    Alone in my room for a couple of hours, I unpacked, stuck some posters on the wall, and set up my desk in the back by the window. I stood over the CD player when someone knocked on my door.
    “It’s open.”
    In came Sammie Soifer, smiling like a goon.
    “Hi, Danny!” he called, catching his shoe on the linoleum as he crossed the room. I took a step to meet him and grabbed his hand. The poor kid’s palm, moist and sticky as a raw meatball, reminded me of when I met him the first day of school last year. He’d been my roommate and the first friend I’d made in a while. He was nice as hell to me, all year. I should have treated him better. Everybody should have.
    “What do you say, Sammie?” I asked. “How you been? How was summer?”
    “Great,” he said, rubbing the back of his arm, up and down. “Great.”
    “You in this dorm?” I asked him.
    “Yeah,” he said, kind of shy. “Right next door.”
    “That’s cool,” I said. “That’s cool.”
    He sort of smiled in a relieved kind of way.
    I returned to the CD player on the trunk between the two desks. “You’re just in time for some Springsteen.”
    His sneaker squeaked again. “We better not, Danny,” he said from the hallway. “We’ll be late for the meeting.”
    “Relax,” I said. “What are we gonna miss anyway?”
    “You never know,” he said. “It’s… it’s some crowd.”
    Sammie seemed nervous. He was always a little nervous, but he seemed especially uptight just then. I’ll never forget his face when I told him we wouldn’t be rooming together for fourth year. The little color he had went right out of him. Unlike me, though, he knew how to forgive. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.
    “Alright, alright,” I said. I put the CD away and joined him outside my door. I peeked over the wooden railing at the group gathered for our first dorm meeting. A few new faces along with the many whose names I’d forgotten over the summer. It’s not that I wasn’t a friendly guy or anything; it’s just that I wasn’t good with names. Or faces. I used to be. I swear.
    Sammie and I shuffled down the stairs and entered through swinging double doors. In the common area, sunlight flooded the checkerboard floors and white cinder block walls. Sammie joined the guys in back who hadn’t arrived early enough to grab a seat in the lounge area or on one of the small couches dragged over from the lobby. I walked up to a black kid I’d never seen before, hogging one of the frayed Naugahyde jobs in the last row.
    “You mind?” I asked, pointing to the space where another body could fit.
    “Jccht,” he hitched with his mouth, sort of sucking his teeth, like he was either calling a horse or really pissed off about something. I stood there, waiting for a horse to show up or for him to move over. He moved over, not too fast and with a groan. Friendly kid, I thought as I looked toward the front of the room.
    Up there stood Mr. Good News from upstairs, – a tubby thirty-something in a bright sweater and