The Little Brother Read Online Free PDF Page A

my chest. “You think I’m joking?”
    â€œNah,” I said.
    â€œYou like anyone?” he asked.
    â€œThere’s this girl,” I said, making my voice confidential. “I’ve never told anyone.”
    â€œOh, yeah,” he said. “Tell me.”
    â€œShe gives me hand jobs,” I said.
    â€œBullshit,” he said.
    â€œI’m serious.” My cheeks burned with shame.
    â€œShe hot?”
    I sat back against a jet. “Not bad,” I said.
    â€œShe blow you?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œYou feel her pussy?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œNice,” he said. “Your face’s all red. Do I know her?”
    â€œNah,” I said.
    â€œWanna call her?”
    â€œNah.”
    â€œWhat’s her name?”
    I don’t know how I came up with the name Tammy.
    â€œHmm,” he said. “What’s her last name?”
    I don’t know how I came up with the last name Simon.
    â€œSimon,” he said. “Tammy Simon.” He closed his eyes and started talking about Chrystal Lemmings blowing him, describing the way her mouth felt on his cock, speaking in detail. He was on a roll, and it was like reading pornography online, juicy and explicit. I wasn’t laughing anymore. The only noise besides his talking came from the bubbling water.
    He paused, opened his eyes, shifted, squinted at me. His face soured, as if he’d tasted something unpleasant. But it came from whatever he saw on my face.
    â€œYou look fucked up,” he said. “You okay? You feel sick?”
    â€œNah,” I said. But I felt sick, thinking about this girl Tammy Simon that I’d made up, and Gabe and Chrystal, and the pornos and the things that I’d seen on the computer, in relation to me and to Gabe: all that slapping and thrusting and licking and coming. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have sex, or that sex didn’t excite me, but it also seemed like a physical ordeal. I barely had hair on my armpits and groin. Somewhere between wanting to throw up and needing to cry, I felt a horrible, panicky thumping in my chest. I burped, a slippery gurgle of food and bourbon rising and falling.
    â€œDrink too much?” Gabe said.
    â€œMaybe.”
    Gabe hoisted himself onto the partition between the Jacuzzi and pool, his half-erect penis swaying. Then he stood for a moment and slapped at his chest like Tarzan. He was small and muscular,his butt cheeks paler than the rest of him, and he turned his head to look at me from over his shoulder. “Get up here,” he said. “This’ll help.”
    I lumbered onto the partition, stood beside him. He gripped my wrist and took me with him in a dive-jump-belly-flop into the cold pool. We smacked the surface, and he released me, our bodies sinking. I opened my eyes for a second and saw his hair drifting upward.
    It did help.
    L ATER THAT NIGHT , I couldn’t sleep. Gabe, as far as I knew, was sleeping, and Dad had gone to bed early with a migraine.
    The alcohol and pot had faded, leaving me uneasy. I tried reading Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea for my advanced English class. My teacher had gushed so much about “Papa’s economy of words” that I felt disgruntled, like I’d been promised a steak but what was delivered instead was a plate with a few peas on it.
    Finally, I decided to get a drink of water. I drank a glass in the kitchen and then poured another to take with me. Walking down the hallway from the kitchen in my pajama bottoms and T-shirt, holding my glass, I heard music coming from the living room.
    The TV screen showed one of those pseudo-pornos with simulated sex but no actual copulation. An oil-slicked, hairless man slammed, with a repetitive slapping noise, against an equally oil-slicked woman, both making exaggerated facial expressions, moaning mechanically.
    At first I thought the room was empty, but then I saw the top of Gabe’s head in