Curioddity Read Online Free Page A

poor Air-Max 2000, well past its prime and sadly lagging behind the times, destined never to hit the fairways of the professional tour.
    Wil looked at the frosted-glass door to his office. From his vantage point, the lettering on the glass read, ROTAGITSEVNI ETAVIRP—NAGROM LIW . Underneath this, in smaller letters and clearly legible from his side of the room, was written the legend DIVORCE AND INSURANCE CASES OUR SPECIALTY . This odd mix of betwixt and between presented an obvious problem, for no matter which side of the door a person stood on, at least one of the lines read completely backward. Wil sighed heavily again, as he always did whenever he considered how much he’d paid a local glass etcher for that particular piece of promotional genius. He wondered for the thousandth time how many potential clients had been put off by his obvious lack of organizational prowess, and settled on “not very many” since they’d have to be crazy to come all the way up to the nineteenth floor of the Castle Towers.
    *   *   *
    B EING A private investigator, especially one specializing in divorce and insurance fraud, was a far cry from the splendiferous blueprint Wil had originally drawn up for his life. As a child, Wil had planned to follow a unique and spectacular career path, narrowing down his options to one of few possibilities: (1) a hedgehog doctor, (2) developer of the world’s first fruit-flavored wallpaper, (3) designer of the personal matter transmitter, or (4) quite possibly all of the above. He’d later settled upon just plain “inventor of stuff.” That was, of course, until he reached the 207th day of his tenth year of existence.
    After Mom died, the house was a very quiet place for a very long time. Then one day without warning, Wil’s father had decided to sit him down and explain How Things Were Going To Be From Now On. Things were going to be very different.
    As far as Barry Morgan was concerned, Melinda’s fertile imagination and her penchant for electrocuting things were the cause of her demise. While the second of these things was quite possibly true, the logic of the first part escaped Wil entirely. For all of his life, he’d been encouraged to use his imagination, to grow as a person, to see the magic hidden in plain sight all around the world. Well, his dad told him, this was going to change. For one thing, there was no such thing as magic. For another, looking for answers in difficult places had proven to be a dangerous fool’s errand that could only end in atomization and subsequent tears.
    â€œYou can’t live your life like a firework,” Barry had explained to his son. “Fireworks explode, and they usually take a few fingers and eyeballs with them. You’re better off staying rooted to the ground and watching other people flame out.”
    After that nugget of wisdom, Dad had made Wil listen for three hours as he explained about the difference between imagination and reality. He’d told Wil the shocking truth about Santa, explained the economics of safety, and drilled into Wil that magic was always a trick. Always.
    Young Wil had been resistant to his dad’s new world order at first. He would secretly build little inventions out of cardboard, and whenever Dad was out of the house he’d leaf through Mom’s old science magazines. When his father found out, the magazines were thrown out with the trash. Blueprints and cardboard were subsequently and consequently forbidden from the house.
    One day, Wil came home early from school to find his dad sitting alone in front of the fire, clutching a photo of his mom. Dad was crying but when Wil moved to intercept, Barry gruffly pretended he was coming down with a cold, or something. What became clear from that experience—it was something that Wil would never forget—was that his dad had lost the thing most dear to him the day he had lost his beautiful and