Elvendude Read Online Free Page A

bathroom. I'm in the kitchen. Was."

    "Find the utility room. There's a half-bath back there." Adam continued, as Daryl started that direction, "Is anyone around?"

    "Nope. Haven't been in the living room yet. Music's still going. I fell asleep in the backyard."

    "Music's still going because it's on a CD carousel. Random. Steve put it on last night before I left."

    Daryl paid little attention to his friend. His bladder had reached critical mass. Little else registered until he found the bathroom and started relieving himself.

    "That's gross," Adam said. Daryl sighed with relief. He noticed a bulge, right below his stomach, that had extended further than normal. Someone once told him that was his liver.

    "What time is it anyway?" Daryl asked.

    "One o'clock," Adam replied. "And you're just getting up?"

    Now he wished he hadn't picked up the phone. This was not the kind of lecture he was in the mood for. Jesus, I don't need parents. All I gotta do is call Adam. He'll do all the bitching for them.

    " You drank," Daryl whined.

    "I had one. Then I left. You know that. I might as well have had a Sprite."

    Which was one aspect about his friend he never understood. What is the point of just having one? He didn't like the way the conversation was going, the inevitable debate, which usually took place the day after a party. And since he couldn't recall much that would support his argument, he decided to end the discussion.

    "Do you need to talk to Steve?" Daryl asked impatiently.

    "No. I just . . . I dunno, I just had a bad feeling something happened over there. Guess you're all right."

    He's just playing head games with me, like he usually does when I'm like this. Adam can be a real jerk sometimes. It wasn't always like this, though. He tried to remember when things began to change with them, counted back a dozen months, to their sophomore year in high school. Daryl once thought it was pretty neat that Adam's mother was a cop. When he started partying, though, and buying pot by the ounce, coke by the paper, and crack by the bottle, he didn't think her profession was very neat anymore.

    In the next room, Sheep surrendered to KMFDM. In the brief transitional silence, Adam ended the conversation.

    "Call me later, if you feel like it. I gotta go. Late for work," Adam said. "And oh, yeah. Happy birthday," he added, and hung up.

    Daryl stared at the receiver, the dial tone somehow reaching his ears through the blast of Virus, an older KMFDM album from 1989. He hated this album, in general hated any music from the previous decade or earlier, no matter what it was. Had to be 1990 or later. And here it was 1994. What are we doing listening to this old shit anyway?

    "Time to get out of here," he muttered to the phone. He shivered as goose bumps pimpled his flesh.

    He returned the phone to its cradle and started down the hallway, toward the music, grabbing a cooler out of the fridge on the way. It was so loud he felt like he was walking through a lake of sound.

    Then he remembered.

    Jesus Christ, what a pipehead. We got out of school a week ago. It's summer vacation!

    The revelation added bounce to his step. The music didn't sound so bad anymore, and when he entered the living room he walked over a body to turn up the music. The room was a wreck, but then it always was after one of Steve's parties. The kid he stepped over was a freshman, just turned fifteen, who was the younger brother of Gina, one of the girls Steve used to boff. Steve and Gina had an argument the night before, something about Steve wanting to chase every girl in school but her, but he let Colm come over anyway, because he was silly and stupid when he got high and made everyone laugh.

    Steve was passed out on the huge black leather pit group, a monstrous chunk of furniture that swallowed up the entire corner of the room. Two girls, partially clothed, lay more or less astride him, zonked out as well. Daryl didn't remember their names, but vaguely recalled