Touching Darkness Read Online Free PDF

decided that I was only mostly grounded, he hasn’t been as paranoid.” Although as predicted, Dad had counted this visit as Jessica’s weekly get-out-of-jail-free card. She hoped that her mother would overturn the ruling after work tonight if she wasn’t too exhausted.
    Jessica walked her bike up to the sagging front porch and began to lock it to the iron rail.
    “You don’t really have to do that here,” Jonathan said.
    Jessica threaded the chain through her spokes and snapped it shut. “Humor me. Big-city habits die hard. Besides, I like to have Anfractuously around.”
    “ ‘Anfractuously’? That’s your bike lock’s name?”
    “Thirteen letters. And because you’re about to ask, it means ‘snakily.’ ”
    Jonathan blinked. “ ‘Snakily’? Did Dess come up with that?”
    “Who else?” She clicked the lock into place. The way its metal links coiled through the frame of her bike did kind of remind her of a snake.
    When she turned back to Jonathan, he stepped forward and gathered her into a long hug. She pressed against him, enjoying the warm solidity of his body. In the midnight hour Jonathan felt so slight, almost fragile in his weightlessness, as if he weren’t really there. Midnight might allow them to fly, but in some ways it cheated her of Jonathan’s substance.
    “Are you okay?” he asked.
    “Sure. Not much sleep. How about you? You sound like you’re getting sick.”
    He shrugged. “Forgot to bring a jacket last night. It was a cold walk home.”
    “Oh my God.” She looked up at him. “I forgot…” She hadn’t thought of Jonathan walking home—she never imagined him walking anywhere. “But it was freezing last night.”
    He smiled and croaked, “Tell me about it.”
    Jessica stared at the ground. She’d been afraid, but at least she’d been warm and inside. It was miles back to his house. She looked up into his brown eyes and said quietly, “You know, you could have come—”
    The front screen door was wrenched open with a shrieking of rusty springs.
    “Where are they? You seen them anywhere?”
    They both turned to face the clamor. Emerging from the dilapidated house was an old man, his face weather-lined and unshaven. Hands shaking wildly, he spread his fingers and stared down at the porch, grasping at something invisible.
    “They got away!”
    “I’m sorry” Jessica spoke up. “Um, who did?”
    “My babies.”
    His eyes swept up to her, squinting through a film of milky white. A look of confusion overtook his panicked expression, and a bright line of drool on his chin sparkled in the sunlight. Tufts of white beard poked out along his wrinkles, as if his razor couldn’t reach into the crevasses of his ancient face.
    “It’s okay, Dad, I’ll find them.”
    Through the screen door, Jessica saw Rex’s pale bespectacled face come into focus. The rusty springs screeched again as he reached out to take his father’s shoulder firmly.
    “You just sit down in here and we’ll look for them.”
    Rex pulled his father in through the door, the old man’s words reduced to mutterings at his touch. The screen door swung closed behind them, bouncing to a stop in a series of claps against its frame.
    Jessica reached out and squeezed Jonathan’s hand. “Did I say thanks for coming, by the way?”
    “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he croaked.
    Footsteps returned, and Jonathan dropped her hand.
    “Was it you guys who called earlier?” Rex opened the door and stepped out, squinting in the sunlight. He waved them over to a trio of lawn chairs at the far end of the porch. He was dressed in the same uniform he wore every day to school: dark pants and a collared shirt so black that his pale face had seemed to hover in the air behind the screen door. His heavy boots clumped along the porch, the metal chains around the ankles jingling and flickering in the sun. He’d told Jessica the anklets’ names a few days before—tridecalogisms like Conscientious and