Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn Read Online Free

the ass—and to Gid's utter amazement, the girl blushes and smiles.
    That's what I need to be like, Gideon thinks. I want to have girls so into me that when I tap them on the ass, they smile at me.
    Oh see, now, that's kind of gross. But I get it. What teenage boy wouldn't want that? What teenage girl wouldn't want her version of that? I know I would.
    "Anyway," Cullen continues, "Cockweed tried so hard to get me kicked out last year, but shit, he could never catch me!"
    "Catch you?" Gideon says. "Catch you doing what?"
    Katie laughs and, keeping her eyes on Cullen the whole time, struts out of the room. Her butt in red pants is like an upside-down box of Valentine candy.
    "Does that girl go to school here?" Gideon asks.
    Cullen laughs. "Her brother does. I know her from the Vineyard. She was dropping her brother off, and she just came over to say hi."
    When girls say hi to me, Gideon thinks, they really just say hi.
    The wall opposite the door has two large windows, one of which leads to a fire escape. Gideon sees a green rim of the quad; a few branches touch the edge of the outer pane. The wall to his left, the plain wall, has two doors to reveal one large (the make-out place) and one small closet. The small one has a pull-up bar in the doorframe. The furniture is all standard campus issue, but there's a white iPod attached to a stereo and a pair of freestanding Bang & Olufsen speakers.
    "Nicholas and I chose this room especially for ease of exit," Cullen says, gesturing at the fire escape. "That's White, the girl's dorm where our friends live," he says, pointing through a window on the side of the room, down to a modern brick building across another expanse of grass.
    Ease of exit? Gid wonders. This means sneaking out, right? A nervous-making, exciting idea.
    Right, Gideon. Prep school is the site of the cool euphemism. You'll get used to it.
    Jim Rayburn walks in, swinging his truck key around his finger. I think it says something about fishing, but I can't read it. Jim Rayburn's face falls when he sees Cullen. Not in an "I can't believe my son's living with this obvious delinquent" kind of way, but in a "Why did this actually-not-so-obvious delinquent get a higher rung on the male food chain than I did?" way. Jim Rayburn is deeply insecure. Hence Gid's panic. Gid hopes (somewhere deep down) that he's getting away from Jim soon enough so as not to absorb this trait.
    "A pleasure," Cullen says. The big hand grips Jim's with confidence and warmth. "Nicholas and I have been looking forward to meeting your son." Jim Rayburn widens his stance, his body opening up a little under Cullen's disarming friendliness.
    The door squeaks and opens a crack. Gideon sees a sliver of a head with shiny straight black hair and one unnaturally blue eye. The door opens some more. A boy's face. The boy is not smiling. He's carrying a large jug of water. He uses a brown leather duffel to nudge the door open farther and walks into the room. He hoists the duffel up onto a low wooden dresser, then, still without a word, disappears into the hallway, returning with an identical duffel. He sets it down, then walks over to the middle bed and pulls it all the way across the room, setting it in a shadowed area where the roof slopes down. He stands back, stares at it for a second, then moves the bed about two inches to the left. He drinks deeply from the jug, then puts it under the bed.
    "I'm Nicholas," he says to Gideon, still not smiling. "I assume you're Gid." He nods at Jim. "And I assume you're Gid's dad?"
    "When you assume...," says Jim, even though there's really no joke to be made here. Nicholas's smile is thin and tolerant as he shakes Jim's hand, then Gid's. Nicholas is smaller than Cullen, about three inches shorter and about two thirds as wide, but somehow he's more intimidating. He has fantastic posture.
    Nicholas goes to the duffel and places his hands on top as if to steady himself. He unzips it and removes first a hammer, followed by a