Runt Read Online Free

and dad left her forever and this is where she’s got to stay, so she’s just trying to find her place.
    â€œElizabeth, quick.”
    By the time we get back, it’s late and dark. My mother makes Sadie sleep in that crate all night. I can hear her whimpering from my bedroom. I try to shut my door but it almost sounds louder.
    â€œIt’s okay, Sadie. I know you didn’t mean it.” I am kneeling next to her. She barely fits in there. I know she can’t turn around. Maybe she’s thirsty, so I bring her some water in a plastic dish, but she can’t get her snout out between the bars to drink. If I open the door, even just a little, she’ll push her way out and I’ll never get her back in.
    It turned out to be Blinkie, not Nod, that got into the fight. Now she has a big bite in her tongue. Lots of blood, the vet told us, but nothing we can do but let it heal. He gave us some antibiotics. My mother prayed all the way home that Mrs. Smallman doesn’t notice. The bleeding stopped and you can only see the wound when Blinkie opens up her mouth.
    Thank the Lord dogs can’t talk, my mother says.
    â€œIt’s okay, Sadie,” I say. “Your mommy and daddy are coming back soon. And then you’ll be out of there.”
    Sadie cries, little breathing cries, all night.
    It isn’t until just before I fall back asleep, right there on the rug in the den, that I remember The Answering Voice. I never got to show my mom.
    Tomorrow.

WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU
----
    For five hundred years, the horses have run free on the outer banks of North Carolina. Since he was a baby, Ethan and his family have been renting a house with the Zingone family, on the beach in Corolla. Ethan’s father and Don Zingone had gone to college together in Virginia, and even though the two families both lived states away, they’d spent this week together on the outer banks for the last ten years. But never once, in all those boiling hot summer days, had Ethan seen a wild horse.
    â€œIf the hurricane comes this way we’ll have to evacuate.” Jamie Zingone shook the Boggle cube.
    â€œNo, we won’t,” Jamie’s little brother, Benjamin, said.
    â€œOh, yes we will, and we might have to leave youbehind,” Jamie answered his brother.
    Ethan lay with his feet stretched out over the arm of the couch, his head resting on the other end. He was staring up, watching the huge paddles of the ceiling fan turning slowly. Hanging clumps of dark dust threatened to fly off at any moment and land right on Jamie’s head. That’s the kind of summer it was.
    Benjamin asked again. “That would never happen, would it, Ethan?”
    Benjamin was seven. Ethan ten. Jamie Zingone was a year and a half older than that. The last thing Ethan needed was to have Jamie’s little brother thinking he had an ally in Ethan. It wouldn’t help Ethan’s status with Jamie at all.
    â€œHow do I know?” Ethan answered.
    He didn’t know, and to tell the truth he was a little scared about the darkening sky and the weather reports. After a full day at the beach, the parents were all up on the main floor where the kitchen was. The kids mostly stayed downstairs where the television was. Ethan felt bad for Benjamin, but what could he do?
    Yesterday Jamie and Benjamin’s mom made a run to the supermarket for groceries, and for some reason—maybeto have some influence over the selection of ice cream and cookies—all three boys went along. All three sat in the backseat; Jamie had one window seat, Ethan the other, and Benjamin, being the youngest, was stuck in the middle. At some point during the drive, Jamie gave Ethan the signal to push Benjamin as hard as he could.
    â€œSqueeze him,” Jamie ordered. He dug his shoulder and hip into his little brother. Ethan did the same, until Benjamin’s eyes sprung with tears. Until Jamie and Benjamin’s mother told them to stop.