The Wild Things Read Online Free PDF

and uncertain. “Do you know exactly what Holloway didn’t like about the report?” she said, pulling the hair from her forehead.
    Max’s eyes fixed upon something under her desk: there was a red paper clip bent into the shape of a dragon. He did not want to attract attention, so he slithered, as slowly as he could, toward the paper clip and grabbed it. It was covered in a rubbery casing and felt good in his hands. With a similar length of rubber-covered wire, his father had once used a Swiss Army knife to cut the casing back and then twisted the metal into the shape of a swan. His father could do anything with a Swiss Army knife -- or any knife, really. He would make things with his hands and then toss them to Max as if to say, It’s just this thing. Take it if it means anything to you. Max had kept everything he’d ever made -- swans, yo-yos, pull-toys, a kite made from vellum and sticks from the backyard.
    “I just don’t know where to begin,” his mom said. “I feel like I have to start over and even then I don’t know what he wants.” Her voice quavered, and he wanted to do something to make her feel stronger. So often, when she seemed upset, when someone on the phone was making her cry, he didn’t know what to do. But this night he thought he knew the solution.
    He got up, and adopted the posture of a robot. He was very good at his robot imitation and had been told as much many times. He entered her peripheral vision, walking and sounding like a robot -- a robot, he decided, who had a slight limp. She had laughed at this before, and he thought she might laugh today.
    “I feel like that’s what I did,” his mom said into the phone. “Isn’t that what I turned in?”
    Finally she saw Max and forced a smile. He continued walking, turning his head to smile at her, pretending that he was not noticing that he was about to walk into the wall. Thunk. He hit the wall. “Ohhh noo,” he said, in a voice half robot, half Eeyore. “Ohhh noo,” he groaned again, trying to walk through the wall, his robot arms rotating futilely.
    She laughed, first silently, then out loud. She snorted. She had to cover the receiver to avoid being heard.
    “That’s okay,” she said, recovering. “No problem. I guess I just have to get started. I’ll have it in the morning. Thanks Candy. Sorry to call you at home. This’ll be the last time. See you tomorrow.”
    She hung up the phone and looked over at Max.
    “Come here,” she said.
    He stepped over to her, his forehead at the level of hers. Quickly she took Max in her arms and squeezed him. It was so sudden, though, and the hug was so intense -- her arms almost vibrating -- that Max let out a gasp.
    “Oh Max. You make me happy,” she said, kissing him roughly on the crown of his head. “You and Claire are the only things that keep me going.”
    Her hug became tighter, too tight to be meant for him only.
    There was a long silence. Max wondered if he should say he was sorry, because he was sorry. But he could not find the word
Sorry
. He could only find words like
I want to live under my bed
and
Please take me back
and
Help
.
    “Do you have a story for me?” she asked.
    Max did not have a story ready.
    “Yeah,” he said, stretching out the word as long as he could, while he thought of something. She liked to hear his stories, and would type them out on her computer as he narrated. Still searching for a tale, he lay down under the desk, the location where he usually did his narrating. He liked to be underneath, her feet resting on his stomach, where he could watch her face -- to gauge her reaction to the story as it progressed -- and to see her fingers on the keyboard. He needed to watch her type to make sure she was getting it all down.
    He began:
    “Once there were some buildings. They were these huge buildings and they could walk. So one day they got up and they left the city. Then there were some vampires. The vampires wanted to make the buildings into vampires so