Running on Empty Read Online Free Page A

drove on in silence.
    Ethan nursed his second beer—they’d only been able to scrape together enough cash from their pockets for a six-pack of Molson Canadian when the liquor store opened—and watched a sailboat on the Northwest Arm tack against the stiff breeze. As the boat headed toward open water, its back and forth movements reminded Ethan of the dance he and his old man had been performing for as long as he could remember. There must have been a time when the two of them hadn’t been at opposite ends of every argument, but he couldn’t recall it now.
    “So,” said Pete, swivelling around to look at him over the back of the bucket seat. Pete had downed both his bottles soon after they’d opened the six-pack, and he released yet another toes-to-tonsils belch before he continued. “Any idea how you’re gonna come up with the cash?”
    “Yeah,” Ethan grumbled, “no sweat. I’m winning the lottery.”
    Kyle snorted in the front seat. “Too late. I already picked those numbers,” he said, patting his chest pocket. A slip of paper crinkled inside it.
    They sat in silence for a few moments. Then, “You hear aboutthose two from Antigonish who won last week?” asked Pete.
    Ethan nodded. He remembered the photo on the front page of
The Chronicle Herald
, a middle-aged couple holding a Lotto 6/49 cheque the size of a sheet of plywood, shit-eating grins on their faces.
    “I read somewhere that all those lottery winners end up miserable,” offered Kyle, tipping his second bottle and draining the last of the amber liquid.
    “You’re kidding me,” said Ethan.
    Kyle turned to look at him. “No, seriously. Losers come out of the woodwork looking for handouts.”
    “That part I believe. Just not the part about you reading.” Ethan winked at Pete, who hooted and high-fived him.
    “Asshole,” Kyle growled over their combined laughter, but even he had to grin before going on. “Anyway, they did some kind of survey, contacted the really big winners a few years after they claimed their cash and asked them how their lives changed. Every one of them said they were happier before they got it.”
    “My heart bleeds,” said Pete.
    Ethan nodded. “I could live with a problem like that.”
    Kyle slid his bottle back into the box with the other empties. “One problem at a time, okay? If you don’t have the money, I gotta let Filthy take her.”
    Ethan groaned. The thought of Philip LaFarge owning the car
—his
car—made his heart sink. Filthy, who had dropped out of school at the same time as Kyle, drove one of the city’s garbage trucks, and Ethan imagined him tooling around in the Cobra now, pictured him installing one of those christly musical horns and hanging furry red dice from the rearview mirror. Filthy wasn’t the classiest guy going. Ethan felt his anger toward his father blaze again, and his knuckles whitened around the neck of the beer bottle. “You couldn’t maybe wait a while for the cash?” he asked, though he knew what the answer would be.
    Kyle shook his head. “Wish I could, but airfare’s a bitch. I already maxed out my MasterCard, and no way will Selena fly standby.”
    Ethan nodded. Looking out the window at the sailboat carving the blue water of the Arm, he imagined the moment frozen in his mind like a video on pause, the Standby command blinking in the lower corner of an imaginary screen. Except, of course, the moment wasn’t really frozen. Sails snapped and billowed, a gleaming bow sliced the waves, gulls circled and swooped overhead. Nothing stayed the same. No one waited for anything anymore. No one except Ethan Palmer.
    “Where
were
you today?” called Allie as she sprinted down the walkway in front of John C. Miles High. The dismissal bell had just rung so Ethan had no fear of being seen by administrators amid the throng that poured out of the building and flowed toward the street.
    As it always did when he saw Allie, Ethan’s heart two-stepped in his chest. Her long red hair