Needful Things Read Online Free

love.”
    â€œI’ll help you forget him,” Brian says, his voice tough and tender at the same time, “if you’ll call me . . . Bri.”
    â€œThank you,” she whispers, and then, leaning close enough so he can smell her perfume—a dreamy scent of wildflowers—she says, “Thank you . . . Bri.And since, for tonight at least, we will be girl and boy instead of teacher and student, you may call me . . . Sally.”
    He takes her hands. Looks into her eyes. “I’m not just a kid,” he says. “I can help you forget him . . . Sally.”
    She seems almost hypnotized by this unexpected understanding, this unexpected manliness; he may only be eleven, she thinks, but he is more of a man than Lester ever was! Her hands tighten on his. Their faces draw closer . . . closer . . .
    â€œNo,” she murmurs, and now her eyes are so wide and so close that he seems almost to drown in them, “you mustn’t, Bri . . . it’s wrong . . .”
    â€œIt’s right, baby,” he says, and presses his lips to hers.
    She draws away after a few moments and whispers tenderly
    â€œHey, kid, watch out where the fuck you’re goin!”
    Jerked out of his daydream, Brian saw that he had just walked in front of Hugh Priest’s pick-up truck.
    â€œSorry, Mr. Priest,” he said, blushing madly. Hugh Priest was nobody to get mad at you. He worked for the Public Works Department and was reputed to have the worst temper in Castle Rock. Brian watched him narrowly. If he started to get out of his truck, Brian planned to jump on his bike and be gone down Main Street at roughly the speed of light. He had no interest in spending the next month or so in the hospital just because he’d been daydreaming about going to the County Fair with Miss Ratcliffe.
    But Hugh Priest had a bottle of beer in the fork of his legs, Hank Williams, Jr., was on the radio singing “High and Pressurized,” and it was all just a little too comfy for anything so radical as beating the shit out of a little kid on Tuesday afternoon.
    â€œYou want to keep your eyes open,” he said, taking a pull from the neck of his bottle and looking at Brian balefully, “because next time I won’t bother to stop. I’ll just run you down in the road. Make you squeak, little buddy.”
    He put the truck in gear and drove off. Brian felt an insane (and mercifully brief) urge to scream Well I’ll be butched! after him. He waited until the orange road-crew truckhad turned off onto Linden Street and then went on his way. The daydream about Miss Ratcliffe, alas, was spoiled for the day. Hugh Priest had let in reality again. Miss Ratcliffe hadn’t had a fight with her fiancé, Lester Pratt; she was still wearing her small diamond engagement ring and was still driving his blue Mustang while she waited for her own car to come back from the shop.
    Brian had seen Miss Ratcliffe and Mr. Pratt only last evening, stapling those DICE AND THE DEVIL posters to the telephone poles on Lower Main Street along with a bunch of other people. They had been singing hymns. The only thing was, the Catholics went around as soon as they were done and took them down again. It was pretty funny in a way . . . but if he had been bigger, Brian would have tried his best to protect any posters Miss Ratcliffe put up with her hallowed hands.
    Brian thought of her dark blue eyes, her long dancer’s legs, and felt the same glum amazement he always felt when he realized that, come January, she intended to change Sally Ratcliffe, which was lovely, to Sally Pratt, which sounded to Brian like a fat lady falling down a short hard flight of stairs.
    Well, he thought, fetching the other curb and starting slowly down Main Street, maybe she’ll change her mind. It’s not impossible. Or maybe Lester Pratt will get in a car accident or come