Werewolves in Their Youth Read Online Free PDF Page A

Paul—”
    “Great.”
    “—because he feels that he really needs to see you, tonight. But the two of you will have to sit outside in the car and talk, or go somewhere else. I’m not going to let him in the house.”
    I was astonished. “Why not?”
    “Because, Paul, your dad—you know as well as I do—he’s become, well, you know how he’s been lately. I don’t have to tell you.” As if she were angry, she folded her arms, and clenched her jaw. But I could see that she was trying to keep herself from crying. “I have to set some limits.”
    “You mean he can’t come over to our house anymore? Ever again?”
    There were tears in her eyes. “Ever again,” she said. Once more she crouched before me, and I let her take me in her arms, but I did not return her embrace. In the picture window at the end of the hall I watched her reflection hugging mine. I didn’t want to be comforted on the impending loss of my father. I wanted him not to be lost, and it seemed to me that it would be her fault if he was.
    “He said he’s going to collect his things. So I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t get rid of them, eh?” She gave me a poke in the ribs. “He must want them after all. Hey,” she said. “What is it? What’s the matter?” She followed my gaze toward the picture window, where our embracing reflections looked back at us with startled expressions.
    “Nothing,” I said. A light had just come on in the Stokeses’ house. “I—I have to go over to Timothy’s. I left something there.”
    “What?”
    “My Luger,” I said, remembering a toy I had lent to Timothy sometime last summer. “The pink one that squirts.”
    “Well, it’s time to eat,” said my mother. “You can go after.”
    “But what if Dad comes?”
    “Well, what if he does? You can go over to Timothy’s tomorrow. He’s probably not allowed to see anyone anyway.”
    In five minutes I bolted my dinner—one of those bizarre conglomerations of bottled tomato sauces, casseroles-in-boxes, and leftover Chinese lunches that were then the national dishes of our disordered and temporizing homeland—and ran out the front door into the night. I was sure that Timothy had found the cartons by now. What if he thought I had meant them for a present and refused to give them back? My father was going to be angry enough about my mother’s treatment of his chemistry things, but it would be worse when he found out that most of them, including his notebook, were missing. I sprinted across our yard as quickly as I could, considering my asthma, and went crashing through the maple trees toward the Stokeses’ house. There was a burst of red light as a thin branch slapped against my left eye, and I cried out, and covered my face, and ran headlong into Timothy Stokes. My chin struck his chest and I sat down hard.
    He smiled, and knelt beside me. “Are you all right, Professor?” he said. He was wearing the same pair of white jeans and stained T-shirt, under an unbuttoned jacket that was too large for him and that bore over the breast pocket his own last name, printed in block letters on a strip of cloth. He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and switched it on. The beam threw eerie shadows across his cheeks and forehead, and his little brown eyes were alight behind his glasses. I saw at once that the antidote I’d administered to him that afternoon had worn off, and he showed no sign of having been subjected to any weird therapies or electroshock helmets. His face looked as solemn and stupid as ever. He wore a rifle strapped across his back and a plastic commando knife in his boot, and three Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos hand grenades poked through the web belt of his canteen, and in his right hand he was carrying, as though it were another weapon, the thick, black, case-bound notebook.
    “That’s my father’s,” I said. “You can’t have it.”
    “I already photographed all of its contents with my spy camera,” he explained. “I have