The Safety of Objects: Stories Read Online Free PDF

little kids. She’s not a stranger.” The guy didn’t answer and we drove away real fast.
    “I’ve got a little something for you, Johnny,” he said. He pulled a bottle out of a paper bag. “Preventive medicine. You look like you might be coming down with something.”
    “I feel okay,” I said.
    “We don’t have a spoon, so you’ll just have to take it from the bottle cap.”
    “I’m not sick.”
    “Look,” the guy said. He took his eyes off the road to look at me and the car swerved into the other lane, the wrong-direction lane. “If I tell you to take your medicine, you take it. I’m not used to children talking back to me. Your parents might stand for it, but I won’t. Got it?”
    I wanted to tell him that I didn’t have parents, that my dad didn’t even live with us, and didn’t he know that, but I couldn’t. It seemed like he was already annoyed with me. I figured it was because my mother wasn’t home, he couldn’t just drop me off, and now he was stuck taking me everywhere with him.
    He put the bottle between his legs and twisted the top until it opened. “Four capfuls,” he said, handing the bottle to me. Even though I felt fine, I did it. It was hard as hell to pour it in the car and I was scared I’d spill, but I did it. I swallowed the stuff. Cough medicine, grape only worse. It tasted like the smell of the stuff my mother used to polish the furniture. “Good,” the guy said. He pulled a Kit Kat bar out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “To clear the taste.”
    We were quiet and he kept driving. It was dark. I watched the cars coming toward us, two white eyes, staring me down.
    “Is my mom home yet?” I asked. I was getting tired.
    “I called her from the drugstore and she said not to bring you home tonight. I think she wanted to be alone.”
    “What about Rayanne?”
    “Alone with Rayanne. She needed you out of her hair for a while, no big deal.”
    I shrugged and thought about how much I hated retards, and how they stole the whole show for nothing.
    “Where do you live?” I asked.
    “We’ll be there in a while.”
    “I’m tired,” I said. “And I’m supposed to color maps for Geography.”
    “Don’t worry, Johnny.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Randy,” he said.
    And then I don’t know what happened. I had my head out the window and felt sick from burgers, fries, shakes, and candy. I was throwing up out the car window while Randy was driving, and he didn’t even pull over. He didn’t put his hand on my forehead like my mother did. He just kept driving and calling me Johnny.
    *  *  *
    “Wake up, Johnny,” Randy said, shaking my shoulder.
    It took me a few minutes to get my eyes to stay open, to remember where I was. “Here you go,” he said, pushing a spoon of the same grape medicine into my mouth.
    “It makes me sick,” I said, after I’d swallowed the stuff. I told myself that I’d never swallow it again. I told myself to hold it in my mouth, in my cheek like a hamster, but not to swallow.
    “I said you were sick. You didn’t listen, did you?” He brought me a glass of water. “Do you want some tea, some toast, some ginger ale?”
    I shrugged and felt dizzy.
    “You have to eat,” he said and then left the room.
    I lay in the bed and felt like I would pass out just lying there. I realized that I was almost naked. I wasn’t wearing any clothes—except my underwear—and I thought about how my mother told us, especially Rayanne, to be careful of people who might want to mess with you. She said that anyone could be a person who would do a thing like that. She said it might even be someone I knew. She told me this a million times but never said anything about what if someone took off your clothes while you were asleep. She never mentioned that, and still I knew I didn’t like it. I sat up and saw my clothes all folded up at the end of the bed. I saw them and thought everything was okay because someone who folds your clothes up and puts