Dismantled Read Online Free

hung by chains from the floor joist. Everlast, the bag says. Thump. Ka- chang . Thump. Ka- chang .
    Emma stands guard in the hall, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, while Mel pokes through all of her mother’s things. A closet full of clothes from Land’s End and L.L. Bean. Practical shoes. In the drawer of the bedside table Mel finds only a flashlight and a paperback mystery with a noose on the cover.
    Emma plays with the brass knob on her mother’s bedroom door, turning it to the left nine times, then nine to the right, for luck.
    “Nothing here,” Mel says, dejected. “Let’s try the office.”
    They tramp down the stairs, through the living room and into the tiny room that serves as the office. Mel sits in the old leather swivel chair and goes through the desk. Emma gets the file cabinet. All they come up with are monthly budgets, bills, old coupons, and dust bunnies. Emma hates dust. She read once that household dust is 80 percent flaked-off human skin. Gross. People are like snakes, they just shed differently. Emma vacuums her room every day. She ties a bandanna around her nose and mouth, bandit style, while she cleans, to keep from breathing in all those sloughed-off skin cells.
    “I don’t know how you got to be so fastidious,” her mom always says.
    “You’re a super freak,” Mel tells her.
    “No,” Emma says. “I’m just fastidious.”
    Mel laughs. “Like you even know what that means!”
    But Emma does know. She looked it up. And it has nothing to do with being either fast or hideous. It just means she’s careful and particular. Nothing freakish about that. Emma believes in order. In putting things together in exactly the right way so that the universe makes sense. Which is why she wants her parents back together. If things are out of order, bad stuff can happen. Storms, car accidents, brain aneurysms. Right after Emma’s dad moved out, a huge tree fell in the yard, almost crushing the house. If that wasn’t proof, what was?
    Emma closes the door to the file cabinet. Then, worried she forgot to straighten the hanging folders inside, she opens it again to check. All straight. She closes the metal drawer, resists the urge to open it and check again.
    Fastidious.
    Sometimes, she hates these feelings. This need to make sure things are put together just right. She can get stuck in one spot forever fixing something, then checking it again and again.
    She gives in, opens the drawer, runs her fingers over the perfectly straight files, feels her body relax.
    “There’s nothing here,” Mel says, scratching her head. Mel cuts her own hair, so it’s shaggy, with brown bangs at a funny angle across her forehead. She needs a shower. Sometimes Mel gets so caught up in inventing her own secret language or figuring out how to make cupcakes explode that she forgets about details like eating and taking a bath. Her dad works a lot of extra hours and her mom’s kind of a hippie, so Mel gets away with stuff most kids wouldn’t.
    Thump, thump goes Emma’s mom in the basement. Left, right. Jabs and hooks.
    “Now what?” Emma asks.
    Mel looks out the window, across the yard, her blue eyes glimmering. “Your dad’s barn.”
    “I’m not allowed in there when he’s not home.” Emma’s voice comes out as a near whine and she’s a little embarrassed.
    “Do you want your parents back together or not?” Mel asks, pushing her glasses with the heavy square plastic frames up her nose. Mel doesn’t even need glasses—these are from a costume shop. She thinks they make her look smarter. Emma thinks they make her look like Velma from Scooby-Doo—who is, she admits, the smart one.
    “Yes. Of course.” Thump, thump, thump, thump. Ka-CHANG! Emma can feel through her feet the vibrations of her mother pounding the bag, feels the fury and is sure that one of these days, her mother’s punching is going to knock the entire house off its old granite foundation. Her mother swears the boxing isn’t about