The Key to the Golden Firebird Read Online Free PDF Page B

Faster than anything she’d had before, even grain. She was laughing, and her head was thrumming within seconds.
    â€œHey, Dave,” Fred said. “Can I light it?”
    â€œNot in the car,” Dave replied.
    â€œI’ll hold it out the window.”
    â€œDude…,” Dave sighed. “Relax.”
    â€œThis one time,” Fred went on, “I flamed it, right? I was down the shore and I flamed some 151 on the beach. And Iwas looking at it. And I totally burned off my eyebrows. Check it out.”
    He pushed back his hair and tilted his big forehead in Brooks’s direction. She saw that his blond eyebrows were very sparse. The skin underneath was all scar tissue, thicker and whiter than the rest of his face.
    â€œThat was hilarious,” Dave said. Even Damaged Bobrick stopped thread picking for a moment to smile.
    Jamie was whispering into Brooks’s ear.
    â€œI’m going to get it,” she said.
    Brooks nodded her approval, even though she couldn’t care less if Jamie got a tattoo. She looked out the window at the flag-lined road they were driving down. They were downtown, on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. In front of them, high above the road and looking like some Greek antiquity, was the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
    â€œThe art museum?” Brooks asked. “Is that where we’re going?”
    Dave smiled into the rearview mirror again. He turned off the parkway onto a smaller road that wound its way up to the art museum. They drove around its base to a small service entrance for emergency vehicles and maintenance crews, cordoned off by a single chain drawn across two poles. Dave stopped the car, and Fred got out and moved the chain so that he could drive through. The path was narrow, just wide enough for the car. The bushes rubbed at its sides as Dave slunk along, lights off.
    â€œShould we be here?” Brooks smiled nervously.
    She could see high windows through the greenery—bits of sculptures, walls of shadowy squares that had to be paintings. ToBrooks’s amazement, Dave pulled the Volkswagen right up onto the grand plaza in front of the colonnaded central building and the grand fountain. The building’s two wings spread out on either side of them, embracing the entire area. The fountains and buildings were lit up with golden spotlights. In front of them was a huge, steep set of stairs that led down to the boulevard. It was intensely bright, but it was so high up that it was also amazingly private.
    â€œRocky!” Fred screamed.
    â€œRocky!” everyone else but Brooks yelled back.
    There was a scrambling all around Brooks. Doors flew open, and Fred, Jamie, and Bobrick tumbled out onto the brick plaza. They didn’t seem to care at all that there was a deluge going on. Fred and Damaged Bobrick were now screaming out the Rocky theme and running haphazardly toward the huge steps. Jamie delicately followed them in her little boots.
    Brooks noticed that Dave was lingering behind. Something told her to do the same.
    â€œYou going?” she said casually.
    â€œNo,” Dave said. “Come on up.”
    She slid out of the back and joined him in the front seat, getting fairly drenched in the process. She brought the King of Pain with her.
    â€œEver see Rocky ?” he asked.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell, he’s this boxer, and he lives in Philly. There’s a really huge scene where he runs up these steps….”
    Dave pointed to the huge slope of steps directly in front of them, which everyone else was now stumbling down.
    â€œAnd that song plays.”
    Everyone else had passed out of sight by this point, but Brooks could still hear them screaming out the song. It grew fainter as they got lower. She took a long swig of the punch.
    â€œWe used to come here a lot last year,” he said. “They do this every time.”
    â€œYou don’t do it?” She smiled.
    â€œNo.” He shook his head.