Cut Both Ways Read Online Free Page A

replaced and does it.
    I take off my glasses and set them on the dresser next to the bed. The bed is soft. The futon at my dad’s is horrible. Here at my mom’s, the bed’s a pillowtop. Plush. Comfortable. Luxurious.
    The room spins for a minute and I shut my eyes until everything’s still. I think I might yack, but I breathe deep for a while and then it goes away and I feel okay.
    â€œOkay,” I say to myself. The word in the stillness hovers over my head.
    Then I reach down my boxers. I’m half hard. Have I been half hard—a quarter hard?—this whole time? How long has it been hard? Since Angus kissed me? Since he woke me up?
    Doesn’t matter. It’s all the way hard now, so I take care of it, like I normally do. The normal way, the normal things I want to think about. About girls I’d liked. Porn I’d seen. Tits in my face. Pussy. Being pussy stupid.
    But I’m the one who’s stupid. Stupid for doing that withAngus. Angus and his bandanna. Angus and his mouth. His hand on my chest. All the things I don’t want to think about, but am thinking about, anyway, until I come, things I’m thinking about afterward, too, all through wiping myself down, because I’m not gay but what choice do I have, to spend the night of my first kiss just exactly like that.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
TWO
    THE NEXT MORNING, my mom is all up in my business, wanting to gab at me. My brains are sizzling inside my head, and she’s asking do I want French toast. Kinney and Taylor are buzzing around the table where I’m sitting trying to act normal even though I feel like I want to die. My mom has on the radio, some talk program. My mom always gets this way when Jay’s out of town; she’s saying, as Kinney and Taylor dance in and out of the room, that Jay’s been gone over a week and she’s going a little nuts having the girls on her own.
    â€œRight,” I say, trying to smile as she pours orange juice. She’s in her yoga outfit, all purple and high-tech spandex, wearing her fitness watch, her ears plugged up with earbuds though I can’t imagine she’s listening to anything anymore. Not with the radio blasting like it is. My hair’s dripping over the collar of my shirt like cold-water torture. I’d made myself sit through a long shower,which I only took because it was the best way to get Kinney and Taylor the hell away from me.
    Kinney’s listening to her iPod (of course, all seven-year-olds require their own iPods) and singing along with music no one can hear, which could have been funny because of her terrible singing, but it’s so loud . Taylor’s on her iPad, drawing things with a little stylus, asking me what she should draw next. Taylor’s always asking that kind of thing: What should her video-game avatar be? What should she name her little cat guy in her comic strip? Should she draw a moon or a planet? I don’t get it. If she wants to be creative so bad, why the hell does she ask someone else to tell her what to do? I can’t think of anything that I could have less interest in. I can’t think, period.
    But I eat the French toast, slowly, so I won’t upset my already burning stomach, and I nod and let my mom ask me all her questions: Do I need some new shorts? Do I have the scratch-damage plan on my new glasses? Do I have a case for the glasses? Do I want to go camping with Jay?
    Answers given: No. No. Yes. Maybe. (But really? No.)
    â€œYou feeling all right?” she asks.
    â€œYeah, I’m just sore from the remodel stuff.”
    She fluffs my hair. Pushes it out of my eyes a little, which gives me a shiver. Like Angus’s hand on my scalp last night. I stand up and take my plate to the sink.
    â€œYou want some Advil, maybe?” she asks.
    YES , I think. Why I’d waited to take