The Flowers Read Online Free PDF Page B

can’t live here with us, m’ijo, I’m sorry. I know it’s hard. I’m sorry.”
    â€œThe dog’s fine,” Cloyd said. “The dog’s happy.”
    I would have to learn to talk in French. I wanted a sentence. It made me smile, thinking how I would learn French.

    * * *
    â€œWhy don’t you ask where she is?” Joe or Mike said, the first dudes around here I met. I couldn’t get which name went to which yet. We were walking home from the new to me school.
    â€œAt least you could ask to go over and see her,” said his brother Mike or Joe. “I’d be so mad.”
    â€œMe too,” said Joe or Mike. “I’m pretty sure they really gassed her in the dog pound ovens. I’d be pissed.”
    One of them slanted an eye at his brother. “You shouldn’t say that,” he told him.
    â€œOkay, yeah,” said the other. “Sorry.”
    â€œSo lots of people have those sheets on their bed?” I asked. I wanted to change the subject.
    â€œYeah, dude,” one of them said, though either could have. “You raised up allá el rancho grande or what? Everybody gets sheets in the big city.”
    I’d seen these twins, José and Miguel Hernández, after the first day, and when I saw them going my direction I made them my walking-home friends. They told me they lived a block farther than I did, which, they explained, meant I lived the second farthest away than anybody else. That was a fact, one of them said in these words, a quantifiable, measurable fact. My fact was that I not only couldn’t tell them apart, I was never sure which one of them was the one talking unless I was staring because they sounded exactly the same too. And since I hadn’t ever known twins before, I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. They parted their black hair on the side the same way, the cut too short, waxed hairs still popping out, and they both wore the exact same black-framed glasses, and they both dragged the soles and heels of their black wingtip shoes. They were strange, you could tell. And not the science-and-math kind of strange, and not the hanging-out-too-much-at-the-library type either.I had a feeling that, before I came along, they didn’t have lots of other friends. Or any. I didn’t have any here either, and I decided I didn’t want any while I was living here because I was convinced it was just for a few months until my mom busted us out. I was so mad at everything that nobody knew I was mad, only that I snapped like a backyard German shepherd. I was not gonna let no new kid fuck with me, and I walked the schoolyard that way. The twins were so harmless I didn’t even have to think about anything with them, which was like world peace, and they were funny, so I liked them and I walked home with them.
    We were stopped at a malts-and-dipped-cones stand another day and were drinking tall shakes at a wobbly picnic table near the sidewalk. The street beside us seemed wider than four lanes. All kinds of cars cruised it, from the best low ones, with glittery spokes, to the finest-looking rods with pipes gurgling and wide slicks, and older Caddies all customized or streeted out, and newer Lincolns that were stock and wet-glossed, and sick, sputtering, wheezy coupes with duct-taped windows, and dried-up station wagons with new various-sized retreads and no hubcaps ever. And always lots of shouting huge loud radio stations floating by, lots of broken tunes and words.
    â€œWhat’s he do?” one of the twins asked me.
    â€œA plumber, I think,” I said. “For like new homes and businesses, you know.”
    â€œHe must be rich if he owns your apartment building,” said the other. “How many apartments?”
    â€œSix or maybe seven. I can’t remember.”
    â€œAny hot ruquitas live there?” one asked.
    That was the first time one of them made me laugh out loud and not just to myself.