Frannie and Tru Read Online Free Page A

and perspective, it was still a monstrosity. Dad had read it out loud to us, giggling until there were tears in his eyes. Whenever we drove by it, he rolled down his window and screamed, “CULTURE!”
    Now, after months of being so much quieter than usual, Dad was positively lit up. Devilish-looking. He stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder.
    â€œAsk Frannie what it means. Her social studies teacher had her class debate the thing last year—it was the tenth anniversary or something. She knows all about it.”
    Tru half looked at me, his eyes already bored. My throat dried up again. There were things I could have said, if I’d wanted to. We’d had to come up with a list of pros and cons and then pick a side, and I’d taken the pro-sculpture side, with just a few other people. I knew the thing was weird, but I kind of liked that it was weird. I liked that it bothered people and maybe even made them think. Plus, at the right time of night, from certain angles, I swear it was actually pretty.
    So, sure, I could have told Tru about how the artist was a big deal and had his work all over the country and the world. And I could have explained how a lot of his pieces were these giant paper-doll people, and they were supposed to be superhuman and spiritual and symbolic.
    Instead, I said none of these things, because I knew with a deep and sure instinct that Truman didn’t give a damn. He wanted to laugh at this thing, not hear a thesis on it.
    I looked for a way to escape this conversation. I opened my mouth to say, Nobody cares, Dad , but wasn’t able to do it. This was my father, he’d lost his job, and he was fragile now in a way that he hadn’t been before. I stewed in a fierce silence, as none of us made a move to leave. Dad turned to me.
    â€œC’mon, Frannie. You don’t want to school your cousin on the finer points?”
    Next to me, Tru’s indifference was a great invisible wall, a force field between us. I looked at the sculpture through his eyes, and there, in that moment, I started to hate it a little bit, too. The thing was a joke, the silly dream of some stuck-up artist who thought he was deep and smart. As I watched the heart’s muted glow turn from magenta to lilac, it seemed uglier to me than ever before. Ugly and embarrassing, just like everything here, everything in my life that Truman was about to see. For the first time, it struck me that the whole idea was childish and simple—the two figures, male and female, joined together like it meant something.
    So when I finally spoke, I spoke as sarcastically as I possibly could.
    â€œIt’s a man and a woman made into one thing,” I said, waving an arm in its direction. “So it’s superugly, but it’s a superbrilliant commentary on, you know, gender or whatever. Very subtle.”
    In that moment, something happened to Tru’s posture. He straightened a bit and glanced in my direction. He started to grin, really grin, his face transforming into something delighted and wicked, like a handsome version of the Grinch.
    He looked . . . pleasantly surprised.
    He cocked an eyebrow, just like in the photo, and turned his gaze back skyward.
    â€œYes, Frannie,” he said. “Very subtle indeed.”

FOUR
    We’d been in the house only minutes, but Tru seemed to have already defused the anger and sarcasm bomb that was Jimmy and Kieran. It happened right in front of me, and I still couldn’t explain how he did it.
    On seeing them, he had nodded instead of shaking their hands, and stood in front of his suitcase, seeming to take up very little room. He refused offers of a drink, didn’t make a move to sit, and didn’t ask where he would be sleeping. His eyes had connected with a lacrosse stick in the corner and he’d made an offhand comment about how Connecticut kids couldn’t play lacrosse for shit.
    He’d actually said those words. For shit . He’d