More Than This Read Online Free Page B

than them all despite being in the same grade, how they – but especially Gudmund – included him in everything as only friends could. Even the theft of a deity.
    They’d stolen it, almost shamefully easily, their stifled laughter the only real threat to getting caught. They’d lifted the infant out of the manger, surprised at its lightness, and carried it, barely able to contain their hysteria, back to Gudmund’s car. They’d been so nervous in the getaway that a light had come on in the Fletcher house as they peeled down the road.
    But they’d done it. And then they’d driven out to the head cheerleader’s house as planned, shushing each other vigorously as they snuck Baby Jesus out of the backseat into the middle of the night.
    Where H dropped him.
    It turned out that Baby Jesus wasn’t, in fact, made from Venetian marble, but from some kind of cheap ceramic that broke with astonishing thoroughness when it came into swift contact with the pavement. There had been a hushed, horrified silence as they stood over the bits and pieces.
    “We are
so
going to hell,” Monica had finally said, and it sure hadn’t sounded like she was joking.
    Seth hears a sound in his chest and realizes with surprise that it’s laughter. He opens his mouth and it comes out in a horrible, painful honk, but he can’t stop it. He laughs and laughs some more, no matter how light-headed it makes him, no matter how he still can’t quite stand up from the countertop.
    Yes. Hell. That’d be about right.
    But before he starts to cry again, a feeling that has threatened behind every second of his laughter, he realizes he’s been hearing another sound this whole time. A creaking and groaning, like a baying cow lost somewhere in the house.
    He looks up.
    The groaning is from the pipes. Dirty, rust-colored water is starting to dribble from the kitchen tap.
    Seth practically leaps forward in his desperate rush to drink and drink and drink.

The water tastes awful, unbelievably so, like metal and mud, but he can’t stop himself. He gulps it down as it comes, faster through the tap now. After ten or twelve swallows, he feels a churning in his stomach, leans back, and throws up all the water he just drank into the sink in great, rust-colored cataracts.
    He pants heavily for a minute.
    Then he sees that the water is running a little clearer, though still not exactly drinkable looking. He waits for as long as he can bear, letting it clear some more, then he drinks again, more slowly, this time taking breaks to breathe and wait.
    He keeps the water down. Feels the coolness of it spreading out from his stomach. It feels good, and he notices again how warm it is in this place, but especially in this house. The air is stuffy and oppressive, tasting of the dust that covers everything. His arms are filthy with it just from leaning against the counter.
    He begins to feel slightly better, slightly stronger. He drinks again, and then again, until the roaring thirst is finally satisfied. When he stands up fully this time, he does so without feeling dizzy.
    The sun through the back window is bright and clear. He looks around the kitchen. It’s definitely his old one, which his mother never stopped complaining about being too small, even after they moved to America, where kitchens tended to be big enough to seat a family of elephants around the breakfast nook. Then again, in his mother’s eyes,
everything
in England compared unfavorably to America, and why shouldn’t it?
    After what England had done to them.
    He hasn’t thought about it,
really
thought about it, for years. There was no reason to. Why dwell on your worst memory? Not if life had moved on, in a brand-new place, so many new things to learn, so many new people to meet.
    And though it had been terrible, his brother had survived, hadn’t he? There had been problems, of course, as they watched to see how bad any neurological damage might be as he grew, but his brother had lived and was usually a