Losers Read Online Free Page A

yeah?”
    â€œI’m alright,” I said noncommittally.
    â€œNice. So, what’s with the accent anyway?”
    â€œWhat’s with it? I’m with it, I guess.”
    â€œHeh,” she laughed. She laughed in a way that sounded like she’d contemplated what she was laughing at, thought about it for a while, and she still didn’t think it was funny. “If you were really swift, you’d say, ‘What accent?’”
    I didn’t reply. Now I was listening to her voice, how much softer and less abrasive it had gotten while we’d been out here. “How about you, then?” I said. “Now you barely sound like you’re from the Yards at all.”
    â€œYeah, I dunno,” she said. The gravel crept back in, but only slightly. Maybe because she was thinking about it now. “It’s a defense mechanism, you know? You got to communicate with people on their level. You got to make sure they don’t give you shit.”
    I waited.
    For a moment, it seemed like she was in another world. Like there was something in her voice that she wasn’t saying. Then she snapped out of it, and snapped back to looking at me. She laid a hand on my chest. I felt like I should leap back, like she’d just bumped into me—it was so direct and so forward and even, if only inside my brain, so sexual. Her nail was right over my nipple. Her palm was hot, and I wondered if she was going to pull me in to her and start kissing.
    Instead, she let go. She stepped back like nothing had just happened.
    â€œBut, come on,” she said, putting one hand on a hip, cocking a posture like she was examining me from afar again. “What’s the deal with your accent? Are you an android, or is your larynx just on steroids?”
    I gulped. “It’s Russian. My parents are from Russia. We got airlifted out of the country when I was seven.”
    â€œOh yeah? How was that for you?”
    â€œI don’t remember that much. My parents made me stuff all the clothes in my room inside a duffel bag in, like, ten minutes. They said to just bring the important clothes—they were too busy, they couldn’t even help me—and when they unpacked they discovered I had only brought my holiday dress suit and a shitload of underwear. Oh, and Where the Wild Things Are, which was my favorite book at the time. Anyway, they hustled me out the door, to a plane, telling me we were going to a party. I stayed up the whole flight, gazing out the window, and fell asleep as soon as we landed. I woke up a few hours later, we were in this rusty recycled car, headed for the Yards, and then I turned into an American.”
    She barked out a bitter, dry laugh. “Damn, dude,” shesaid. “I think that’s the first time I ever heard the Yards being a happy ending.”
    â€œWell, damn yourself,” I said, trying to project some sauciness into my voice. “I didn’t think I was up to the ending, yet.”
    She smiled.
    For the first time, it seemed like I’d found something soft about her. Her voice, her chin, her eyes, even her breasts were so perfect, ample, and fleshed-out, plentiful in the way of Italian mothers and collagen patients, but perfect in the other sense of that word, too, stiff as a Renaissance picture. From her body, and from her attitude as well, she was the total opposite of me: totally composed, totally on top of her own social scene, and totally in control.
    But, man, when she cracked her mouth open and let her smile poke through—awash in all her thin-lipped glory, crooked teeth swimming inside, gums the pale pink of someone who runs their toothbrush under the water instead of scrubbing their teeth at night—it was so imperfect and asymmetrical, so flawed and honest, that it actually made her look beautiful. I wanted to take that smile in my pocket and fall asleep with it under my pillow, to have it keep me warm through the cold of the