Klickitat Read Online Free Page A

touched my too-small sweatshirt, but then I looked at Audra and the feeling passed.
    â€œ
That’s
pretending to be a different person than who you are,” she said.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” I said.
    â€œThere’s nothing worse than living that way,” she said. “Like your life jacket, or that sweatshirt—do you think you’d need that, really, if you stopped taking those pills they make you swallow?”
    â€œI don’t know what I’d do,” I said.
    â€œBut sometimes it still happens—like you still grab me, even when you’ve taken the pills, right? So maybe you don’t need the pills at all.”
    â€œIf I didn’t take them,” I said, “Mom and Dad would know. Mom counts them every night.”
    The train was starting over the river, across the bridge. Down below, there were only a couple of small boats. It wasn’t raining, but it looked like it could start.
    â€œWhatever,” Audra said. “Just think about how you feel—just feel how it all is. It doesn’t make sense the way it is, or the way it’s been. I mean, Mom and Dad? Do we want to end up like them, all boring and sad? In front of a computer or a radio? Attached to a cell phone?”
    The train slid into Pioneer Square, the center of Portland. Groups of kids stood out there, close together, kicking hacky-sacks, smoking. One got on the train, hisshort hair yellow, a dirty Band-Aid on his cheek. His black pants had straps and buckles all over them, and he’d brought his bicycle, a really tiny one, onto the train. He stood there as the doors slid closed and then Audra got up and walked over to him. They were talking, but I couldn’t hear them. She asked him a question; he shook his head. She pointed at his bike; he pointed up in the air, down at the floor. He looked at her and smiled.
    Audra turned and came back and sat next to me just as the train went into the tunnel. I could see us both in the black window, how our faces looked kind of the same. Audra’s was sharper, the shadows darker in her eyes.
    â€œYou know that guy?” I said.
    â€œNot really,” she said.
    â€œWhat were you talking about?”
    â€œHe said he’s going to race that little bike all the way down the hills from the zoo, back to Pioneer Square. Some friend of his is timing him on a watch.”
    â€œWhy aren’t they in school?” I said, but Audra didn’t answer.
    The train slid to a stop at the underground station beneath the zoo. It was lit like a cave, and the boy gotoff. We could see him standing at the elevator, spinning the bike on its front wheel, holding the handlebars, and then he stepped into the elevator and the doors closed behind him.
    Out of the tunnel, in the day again, the train climbed farther away from the city.
    â€œWhere are we going?” I said. “Beaverton?”
    â€œNext stop we get off,” Audra said. “We transfer over to a bus.”
    We had to wait near a parking lot, near Best Buy and Walmart and Home Depot, before the bus came. We picked up our packs and climbed on.
    â€œIt’s not too much farther, I think,” Audra said. “It’s just outside of town.”
    Reaching over, I put my hand in her hand, her fingers dry and rough.
    â€œAre you afraid?” she said.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIt’s all right to be afraid,” she said. “You should be, actually.”
    â€œDoes the girl know we’re coming?” I said. “Won’t she be in school?”
    â€œWe’ll see,” she said. “We’ll wait for her. You know, she’s closer to your age than mine, but she knows so much.”
    â€œI know things,” I said.
    Audra laughed, then looked away, out the window. An old lady was pushing a shopping cart. The wind blew her hat off her head and it was hard for her to bend down and pick it up.
    â€œSo now this girl lives in a house?” I