Hummingbird Heart Read Online Free

gag. So that was the end of our weekly pizza night. Now, whenever it was just me and Mom, we always made pizza together. I loved it.
    â€œGoddamn it.” Mom dropped the knife and looked at her thumb for a second. “Knife slipped.” She stuck her thumb into her mouth and used her free hand to refill her wineglass.
    I made a sympathetic face and turned my attention back to the mozzarella. Something was definitely going on. Toni always said how cool it was, the way my mother was so young and talked to me like we were friends, but I didn’t always think so. Mom had a tendency to give me way too much information, especially when it came to her boyfriends.
    There were things you didn’t want to know about your mother. Things you didn’t want to talk about.
    I knew it was wrong of me, but I couldn’t help wishing she was more like other people’s moms. She was thirty-three but looked younger, and people always thought she was my babysitter or my older sister. And I knew it was snobby, but I wished she had a more professional kind of job, like being a nurse or a teacher or something. I had no shortage of wishes: I wished she’d finished high school; I wished she’d stay single for a while; I wished she wasn’t going to get another tattoo; I wished she didn’t drink so much; I wished she didn’t smoke pot.
    Sometimes I felt like she was the teenager and I was the parent. Mothers, I thought, should be more reliable. More predictable. More grown-up.
    â€œMom? Do we have pineapple?”
    No answer. I glanced sideways at her. “Yo, Mom? Pineapple?”
    She was done with the mushrooms and was just standing there with the tomato-sauce spoon motionless in her hand.
    â€œEarth to Mom? You’re dripping sauce everywhere.”
    â€œWhat?”
    I shook my head. “I asked you if we had any pineapple.”
    â€œI don’t have a clue. Look in the cupboard.”
    â€œFine. Don’t bite my head off.”
    â€œIt’s been a long day.”
    â€œWhatever.” I turned my back and rummaged in the cupboard. Cat food for a cat we don’t have, canned mystery-meat ravioli, soup, beans. No pineapple. I snuck a glance at Mom. She’d knocked back that second glass of wine in less than a minute and was scratching the back of her hand, leaving a red welt. Something was definitely up. “All right,” I said. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
    Mom stopped scratching and folded her arms defensively. “What do you mean?”
    â€œPlease.” I fought the urge to roll my eyes.
    â€œLook, I…I’m sorry. You’re right; I’m distracted.” She fingered the stem of her empty wineglass. “There’s something I have to talk to you about.”
    â€œIs it about Scott?”
    â€œNo.”
    There was a long pause, and I felt an unexpected rush of fear: ice in the belly and an electric tingle shooting down my arms. What if it was something really bad? What if she had cancer? I stared down at the tablecloth still folded on the table and studied the embroidered flowers.
    â€œDylan?” Mom reached out and touched my arm. “Pickle…I had a rather weird phone call this morning.”
    I wondered if it was a teacher or something, but I hadn’t done anything wrong that I knew of. Teachers generally liked me. “Who from?”
    She hesitated. “Mark. From back east. Your…you know. He’s in town. He wants to come and see us. To meet you.”
    A split second’s relief—there was nothing wrong with Mom—and then the words sunk in. My father , even though Mom wouldn’t say it, wouldn’t ever call him that. My heart was doing something crazy, crashing around in my chest like it was trying to bust out. I could hardly breathe. Was it possible to have a heart attack if you were only sixteen?
    â€œDylan, you don’t have to see him. I’ll just call him back and tell him