13 Hangmen Read Online Free Page A

brand-new bed. Meantime—just for a night or two—they might need to move Zio Angelo’s up from the parlor. But they would definitely toss the old beddingstraight into the trash. Tony could use his own sheets and comforter from Ann Arbor.
    â€œNo way,” Tony said. “I’ll sleep on the floor first.”
    Mikey and Angey declared they wouldn’t sleep in this room,
period
.
    Michael suggested the twins head downstairs to the kitchen for some lunch. The fridge was stocked with hummus and tabouleh salad and pita pockets from a health-food store around the corner. He and Julia needed a private word with Tony.
    â€œNo cold cuts?” Mikey said.
    â€œNot even any tuna fish?” Angey sighed.
    â€œSorry, meat wasn’t the first thing that leaped to my mind,” Michael said.
    (Michael had, in fact, been a vegetarian since high school. He didn’t mind if the rest of the family was carnivorous, but he himself wouldn’t even wear leather shoes or belts. He was also a devout Buddhist, which meant that he didn’t believe in killing any living creature—not even a house fly—since its soul might reincarnate into a human being one day. Though admirable, this didn’t help Michael’s geek factor
at all
.)
    â€œTabouleh tastes like kitty litter,” Mikey grumbled. He clomped down the attic steps with Angey at his heels.
    Michael reached over and gave Tony a side hug. “I admit it needs work,” he said. “Let’s face it, the whole house is a littlerough around the edges. Poor Zio Angelo. He just wasn’t able to look after it properly toward the end. Nothing a little DiMarco family TLC can’t fix.”
    â€œHave you lost your mind?” Tony cried. “This whole place should be bulldozed to the ground!”
    â€œIt’s not that bad,” Michael said.
    At that point, Tony melted down. It had been a very long couple of days—it was his
birthday
—and he couldn’t keep it bottled up: Doors squealed open, ceiling paint drifted down on your head like snow, toilet chains came off in your hand, and water gushed orange out of the rusty tap. Hadn’t anyone else noticed the amount of wallpaper stripping and floor sanding it would take to make this house even remotely livable?
    Michael patted Tony’s shoulder. He was positive that once Tony had run the vacuum cleaner, hung a few posters, and laid his own comforter on the bed, he would feel completely different about his new bedroom.
    â€œHello?” Tony said. “It’s not a bedroom. It’s the
attic
. Plus it feels all spooky and haunted and weird. I’m not sleeping here. Ever. That’s final.”
    â€œTony’s afraid of ghosts,” Mikey singsonged up the stairwell. Angey burst into a fit of giggles. They had both been eavesdropping, of course, from the third-floor landing.
    Julia told them to beat it—this was a private conversation.They clambered down the rest of the staircase to the kitchen, wailing like banshees. She rolled her eyes and advised Tony to ignore them. Which, in his opinion, wasn’t at all the same as sticking up for him. Meanwhile, Michael reassured him an old house like this one had its own quirky language—creaks and groans he’d eventually get used to and stop hearing. Anyway, ninety-nine percent of all ghosts turned out to be mice in the walls.
    â€œNot helping!” Tony said. Michael opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Seriously, Dad, what did Zio Angelo have against
me
? I was actually nice to him at Thanksgiving. Angey and Mikey were the ones who rolled their eyes at his stories. He should have made
them
sleep up here.”
    Michael laughed. “As weird as it might seem, Zio Angelo actually believed he was doing you a
favor
by saving you the top floor. He loved this room. He slept up here himself—ever since he was your age—and only decided to move to the parlor when he could