Losers Read Online Free

pull myself away, then relented, pressing my torso against hers, hoping against everything that she noticed, that she could smell how incredibly much I wanted her.
    Oh my God. I am a teenage boy. I am loquaciously, disgustingly horny. I am horny for anything that moves. I have fantasies about the girls on the nine o’clock sitcoms, girls on the ten o’clock dramas, and the girls in the deodorant and car commercials in between. My head is in the gutter, and the rest of my body is squeezed right underneath it.
    We stood right outside the exit door, a few steps away from the kitchen, and she pulled on the hoodie she’d brought out with her. It was tight. It pulled in her stomach and silhouetted her breasts a lot more clearly than the loose shirt and vest of her uniform. She drew a lighter and a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket and lit one up, barely looking at me as she drew the flame into her cigarette with a deep breath. Her hair bristled. It looked nice.
    â€œSo,” she said. She looked at me expectantly, like my being here was a privilege, and now I had to earn it.
    â€œSo,” I echoed, not sure what to say. I folded my hands in front of my belt, realized I was standing with the posture of a fifty-year-old college professor, and quickly slid them into my back pockets. “You live around here?”
    â€œYeah,” she grunted. When she talked, the smoke curled out like a dragon’s breath. “My parents got an apartment a few blocks away. I’m saving up so I can move out of that shithole and getmy own place, probably another shithole. But at least it’ll be my own shithole. You?”
    â€œYeah, kinda. Down where Yardley Ave stops being a hill and flattens out, over near the docks.”
    â€œOh yeah?” she asked, taking a deep, impressed toke. “Rough neighborhood.”
    â€œParts of it are. You learn to lay low.”
    â€œMy boyfriend used to run DVD players for these guys, he was down there all the time. They kept them in one of those old warehouses, not even locked. You could just walk right in and help yourself. There ain’t too many houses around there, right?”
    I shrugged noncommittally, trying to cover up for the fact that I’d winced when she mentioned having a boyfriend. “There’s a few. It seems rough, but it’s mostly quiet.”
    â€œMan, that’s not too bad. I bet I could rent a whole house around there for what an apartment would cost. That would be pretty tight. I could even have friends move in—of course, I wouldn’t, that would kill the whole purpose of it. Hey, are there any houses around there up for rent now, do you know?”
    â€œI dunno. I’m kind of, you know, taken care of.”
    â€œStill doing the parental thing, huh?”
    She said “the parental thing” as if it was an extreme improbability that any child above the age of teething would ever live with his parents. Not sure how to reply to that, I played it cool. “They’re not so bad,” I said, offering up yet another indifferent shrug. “Mostly, we live in two different worlds. I think in English, and they think in Russian.”
    â€œYeah, well, you don’t sound like you think in English.”
    I could feel my face heating up. Now I was blushing furiously. I didn’t say anything, not sure whether I should be offended or not. Other things about me that I was insecure about, I could hide. My accent stuck out like a bad hair day without a hat, like a zit that never went away. My hair was fuzzy and big, curls sprinting out in a Sideshow Bob ‘do that required refreshingly little effort. She ruffled the top of it now, as if petting a puppy.
    â€œDon’t knock it,” she said. “You’re cute. And then you open your mouth and that voice comes out, that voice of yours, and it doesn’t sound anything like you expect it to. I bet you’re good at throwing people for a loop,