Seeing You Read Online Free Page A

hitchhike to California instead of doing their chores, but wound up waiting at Miss Flossie’s house for our parents to pick us up while the town librarian fed us stale cookies and Lactaid. I dreamed of the time twelve-year-old Simon tried to convince Erin she was adopted and was really born at a house located at 666 Damnation Drive, of the moment when she looked at Simon and said, “If you’re trying to make me cry, it won’t work. Dylan was adopted by Mom and Dad and look how lucky we all are.”
    Much better dreams than nightmares of blood and death and grief.
    My attention was caught by the light flashing on in the kitchen of the ranch house, and I wondered what Wade dreamed about at night. A moment later it looked like the front door had opened, and I squinted, trying to see in the darkness if Wade was outside. Then the moonlight caught him as he stood at the top of the porch steps, his face tilted up to the rain.
    I watched as he made his way down the steps, over the mud and grass, to the corral fence. Puzzled, I stared. This wasn’t a drizzle. It was a storm, and even if it were almost summer, a drenching would sap body heat pretty quickly. “Christ, what the hell is he doing? Doesn’t he care if he gets pneumonia?”
    Abruptly I realized, no, he didn’t care. That was the point. And just like that, once again I felt the burn of anger infusing my limbs, powering through me as I dragged my Levi’s and boots on, bubbling under the surface as I stomped down the hall and out the door. I didn’t stop until I reached Wade where he was leaning against the fence, and I grabbed his shoulder and whirled him around to face me.
    “What the fuck are you doing?” I barely recognized my own voice.
    He blinked water out of his eyes and stared dumbly at me before saying, “What?”
    “I said, what the fuck are you doing out here? I know it might seem like a nice night for a walk to you, but I thought I might inform you that it’s fucking pouring outside.”
    Wade looked away, as if he was too tired to even look me in the face, and said, “Go back to bed, Dylan.” Then he turned back around to lean on the fence, dismissing me, and my anger turned to rage.
    It felt like someone else moving after that. Someone else’s hand grabbing Wade’s shoulder to turn him around again, someone else’s arm that cocked back and let fly straight into Wade’s granite jaw, someone else that watched as Wade’s head snapped back from the force and he stumbled against the fence. Because surely it couldn’t have been me that touched Wade in anger.
    But it was definitely me that went down, without a fence to catch me, when Wade’s fist connected to my own jaw. I was sure that would hurt later, but at the moment I couldn’t feel anything except anger and relief that Wade was still fighting.
    I scrambled back up out of the mud, and then it was happening so fast, the adrenaline moving through my veins as we both grunted and swore and swung our limbs, that I wasn’t sure who was landing punches where. We were like one beast, ugly and flailing. I hadn’t brawled like this since Johnny Baron, one of the linebackers in high school, had called Simon a faggot when we were juniors.
    The rain and mud were making things slippery, and then we were on the ground wrestling like a couple kids in the mud, both of us obviously no longer going for blood. Wade managed to roll me onto my back and straddle me, and I felt mud oozing around my head. I could barely see with the rain falling into my eyes.
    It felt like the mud was seeping into my ears, which was just fucking nasty, and I stopped struggling for control and reached out, grabbed a handful of mud and aimed it for Wade’s face.
    It landed around his left temple and I smashed it into his hair and ear as best I could. I started laughing when Wade stopped moving and just sat back, looking down at me as if I had suddenly turned into a purple dinosaur.
    I laughed and laughed until I was scared I would