Kicking Tomorrow Read Online Free Page B

gripping onto his shoulders for a blazing piggyback, his focus is all on the skin of his hands and feet. The land map of veins and freckles is pocked and reddened from the grit embedded there; swatches of grass are mashed into his ankles, fallen asleep from hours of sitting, and the tiny criss-crossings of his skin are like landing strips on a pinkish plain. The grit like scattered boulders. The blue veins like monster worms. And up above, his eyelids feel huge, lowering as slow and heavy as canvas awnings over the entire world. He swallows to pop the underwater pressure in his ears. More bomblets of cider explode in his nose like tiny depth-charges. Bathysphere of booze. He’s going down, safe and sound and abso-tively posi-lutely answerable to no one…
    … when he eventually came down, Rosie still hadn’t returned. That was the first thought he had given her in an hour. Or two. Well, the crowd was humongous, she was bound to get lost for a while. After ten more minutes, however, he grew anxious. Maybe she didn’t like him any more; maybe she had taken off. With someone else. He twisted around and craned his neck to find her, but the crowd was too immense.
    Then he caught sight of her, and she was wandering off in the wrong direction. He thought of yelling, but there was no point–the music was way too loud, and he’d be risking his life to call out in English in
dis
crowd – so he just stood and waved, like a castaway on a desert island. She drifted off aimlessly, like a boat with a luffed sail. He fired a shot into his temple and rolled his eyes. Now pepsis were shouting at him to sit down; the buffalo guys threatened to tie his shoelaces together if he didn’t.
    Rosie was a bobbing pinpoint on a sea of bodies, tacking back, more or less. Veering off again. Now only ten or twenty paces away. She wore a worried expression, not much else. He shrugged and sat down. She was so close, surely he didn’t have to call out. She stepped right by.
    The buffalo guys wolf-whistled. One of them, an oily polka-dot bandanna bunching up his stringy hair, stroked her hand and cooed, “Taberouette, t’es ben cute, toi. Viens faire un tour par ici.”
    Rosie looked down at him angrily, whipping her hand away, and said, “Fuck off, you stupid boy. I can’t understand a thing you’re saying, but I know I don’t like it. I’m trying to find my
friend.”
    “Ayy baby,” he said, “come ere an sit in my lap. Qu’est-ce qu’y a, j’fais pas ton affaire?”
    The other one had a row of fleurs-de-lis tattooed across his shoulders. He grabbed her ankle. Rosie shrieked. “Ayy baby,” the animal said. “Chus pas assez grand pour toi? Viens donc ici an sit on my
face.”
    Before Robbie could decide what to do, she had wrenched herself free and, kicking the guy squarely in the chest, toppled over backwards and landed with a plonk on her own towel.
    “Bob!” she said with a wobbly voice, and Robbie saw in the bright sun how flecks of mascara were suspended in her tears.
    “Why didn’t you shout where you
were?
I was
scared
. I couldn’t
find
you.”
    “Hey,” he said, irritated. He held it against her that she should allow herself to be seen crying. Ivy never would. She wouldn’t allow you to have such a picture of her, like a drooling animal, in your memory. “Don’t cry, K ? People’re looking. Really, Rosie, why don’t you just wear glasses. Or contacts, if you’re so vain?”
    She looked at him wildly. Her lip was trembling. She rolled her gum into a hard little ball and pinned it between her front teeth. “Bob, I think I hate you. I’m being hassled by a couple of goons and you’re embarrassed cause I’m
crying?
Fuck off, you stupid jerk.”
    “Uh, gee, Rosie.” He put his hand on her knee. “I’m sorry. You mix me up, that’s all.”
    She brushed it away. “Yeah, isn’t that typical. I’
m
being threatened with rape, and you want to talk about
your
personal crisis. Well, take off if you can only think