The Nimble Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

skin condition, and the way his
fingernails had started to grow tough and jagged. The way other kids dressed
these days, nobody had seemed to notice.
    Julia reached out to her son and rubbed his head through the
heavy cotton hood. She remembered her teenage bout with acne but could not even
begin to imagine what it must be like for the boy. He roughly jerked away from
her affections.
    "Don't do that," he spat at her. "It hurts
me."
    The boy's mother bit her tongue and walked toward the garage's
Boylston Street exit. She glanced at her watch. If they hurried they would only
be a few minutes late. Julia hoped Daniel would speak to Doctor Sundin about
his self-image problems, and how they affected his relationship with her and
his father. She planned to avoid any mention of his clothes or his music. Those
things got under her skin, but they were superficial. The real problems were so
much deeper.
    As she glanced back to confirm that Daniel was indeed following,
she wondered how much of his personality change could be attributed to Roger
walking out on them. Irreconcilable differences, he'd told his lawyer. The
son of a bitch took the coward's exit , she thought, remembering all the
sleepless nights as her son yowled in his bed, the skin condition so irritating
that he scratched himself bloody trying to stop the itch. Then there were the
violent mood swings, and the complete change in the boy's personality. Yeah ,
she thought. Roger got off easy . There was a small part of her that
envied him. The bastard .
    Julia Ferrick pushed the disturbing thoughts from her mind
and turned to wait for her son to catch up. She was standing in front of a
high, wrought iron fence and beyond it she could see children at play in the
yard of the daycare facility headquartered there. The kids squealed and laughed
as they ran about under the supervision of their minders. It was a nice sound,
one that she hadn't heard in a very long time.
    "I'm coming," Dan mumbled, head down, gloved hands
shoved deep into his sweatshirt pockets.
    "I know," she told him, trying her best to keep
her temper in check. "I just thought I'd wait for you."
    Dan kicked at a piece of gum, crushed flat upon the
sidewalk. "Don't do me any favors," he mumbled as he scuffed at the
pink refuse with the toe of his sneaker.
    Julia Ferrick was about to say something she was sure to
regret when she noticed that a little girl, no older than five, now stood on
the other side of the metal gate watching them. The child sniffled, her hand
slowly rising to her face to rub at her eyes. The little girl began to cry.
    "What's the matter, sweetie?" Julia asked.
    "Don't feel good," the small child whined,
beginning to cry all the harder. Julia moved closer to the gate, wanting to get
the attention of one of the daycare workers, when the child in front of her
began to retch. Thick streams of milky white vomit poured from her mouth to
splash upon the sidewalk, spattering her shiny, black patent leather shoes.
    Julia was about to comfort the little girl through the thick
bars of the metal gate when motion at the periphery of her vision caught her
attention. She glanced down upon the puddle of vomit at the child's feet.
    It was moving.
    Now matter how badly she wanted to, Julia Ferrick could not pull
her eyes away from the horrific sight. The child had regurgitated maggots; not
just one or five or even twenty, but hundreds of them.
    "I trew up bugs," the child whined over and over
again in a dazed chorus. "I trew up bugs. I trew up bugs. I trew up bugs."
    Julia felt that she might be sick as well, and finally tore
her gaze away to look upon the playground for help.
    "Could somebody — anybody — help here
please!" she cried out, on the verge of panic. Then she saw that the staff
was in a panic of activity, the other children sick as well, all of them
throwing up as the little girl at the fence had done.
    One of the staff members fainted, hitting the ground
dangerously close to an undulating pile of