Where All Light Tends to Go Read Online Free PDF Page B

caught on a big, round stone. Gerald folded the tarp up as if it was something worth keeping, and I stared down at the place where the first man I’d ever seen die fit around the boulder like a tongue and groove. The Cabe brothers started making their way toward the trucks. “Later, Jacob,” Jeremy hollered. But I just stood there for a while and stared at it. I figured if it was going to hang with me for a while, I might as well get the details right.

5.
    Cars parked crooked on every square inch of grass and had started bleeding out onto the side of the highway by the time I got there. The whole place looked like a Scrabble board, with all those blocks spelling words like “underage” and “drunk tank.” Though the law would have to show at some point or another, the deputies were usually civil about giving kids a good start on a night they’d never remember. Besides that, I kind of hoped those squad cars would pull up any minute and get a damn fine look at my face. That would have to be as strong an alibi as any.
    I was already half lit off a bottle of Dr. McGillicuddy’s that Daddy wouldn’t miss from the liquor cabinet, seeing as it was still months from cold season. Between those menthol schnapps and a half a roach I’d found in the truck ashtray, I was well on my way when I dropped a white Xanax bar onto my tongue and swallowed.
    There were kids spilling out into the yard, most of them too drunk to stand upright as they made out with friends they’d grown up with and confessed love that would fizzle by dawn. I hoped she was there. I hoped that somewhere in the crowd Maggie was there and that she’d be happy to see me. I couldn’t have cared less about the rest of the faces. It didn’t matter if any of those old chums were alive or thrown out on some bluff for the buzzards to pick apart.
    The inside of the house was ransacked and any dignity that had ever resided there had called it a night. Charlie Mitchell’s parents would undoubtedly wring his big-ass Adam’s apple plumb flat whenever they came home, and maybe that’s why he was running around picking up empties and filling black trash bags with the clock just a hair past one. That poor boy was sweating, beads forming under that bright red hair just as fast as he could wipe. He did a double take when he caught me standing in the doorway. His eyes swelled for a second as if I’d just dropped a shit on a night that was already piled high and steaming.
    I scanned the room filled with faces that I’d known all my life, but it was different now. When I was sleeping in the back of the classroom and even a few months after I’d dropped out, those kids had looked at me like some sort of hero, like I was doing things and going places that they’d always dreamt about but never had the guts to say aloud. Not anymore. Now they recognized me for what I am, I guess. Trash. Trash that wouldn’t have known a fucking thing about them if it weren’t for Facebook.
    Blane Cowen was the first to speak to me. He came stumbling up on gimp legs and that top half of him circling around just a few degrees short of full orbit. His curled mess of hair was coming off his head in every which way and he blinked slow, made it look like he was drunker than Cooter Brown and barely able to talk when he said hello.
    “What’s up, Jacob?” Blane dragged out my name as if it were hieroglyphs.
    “Not shit. What about you?”
    “I’m fucked-up, man! Drinking. Smoking. I’m fucked-up!”
    I laughed a little bit. Playing along with that kid’s game was almost enough to make me forget where I’d just come from for a minute or two. “I hear you, buddy.”
    “All right, man.” Blane seemed to sense that the type of attention he warranted wasn’t anything I could give. “Well, it was good seeing you, man! Hit me up sometime. We’ll go burn one.”
    I didn’t respond but watched Blane stumble away till he got in the center of the room. That was the place he’d always wanted