Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel) Read Online Free

Usually they would then stop at a bar on the way home and her dad would claim Trix was his girlfriend so she could drink. Or he could be in a foul place where he barely muttered hello and dropped her off at the mall while he sat in his truck smoking a joint.
    Trix never knew.
    Her parents had divorced when she was a baby. Her older brother Vox moved down to Tacoma with friends when he was Trix’s age and now tended bar and worked sound at concerts. She only saw him on major holidays. If then. She was pretty sure Vox never contacted their dad. The two hadn’t gotten along since Vox hit puberty.
    A couple guys hooted at her from a passing Honda. She tried not to care that they might be mistaking her for one of the prostitutes, but she wanted to yell after them, this is a Badgley Mischka jacket! What hookers wore Badgley Mischka jackets? She’d gotten it at a thrift store, but still.
    She heard him before she saw him, some twangy song blasting from the speakers of his pickup. He slammed on his brakes with a spray of gravel, leaned over the seat and pushed the door open.
    “Hey babe!”
    “Hi Dad.” Trix didn’t bother to put out her cigarette as she hopped in. She could be tripping on hard drugs and he wouldn’t care.
    They zoomed south on Aurora, through three yellow lights, toward downtown.
    “Where are we going?” Trix asked.
    “A buddy of mine needs help moving a couch in Georgetown. You good with that?”
    Her dad wore a t-shirt that showed a band of his heavy, white gut. His frizzy salt-and-pepper hair was tied back with a twist tie. Like a garbage bag.
    “Would it matter if I wasn’t?”
    “Not really,” he said, guffawing and turning the music down a notch.
    She’d given up being annoyed when he dragged her on an errand or off to a car show she didn’t give a crap about. She wanted to spend time with her dad, as sporadic and halfhearted as his attempts at father-daughter togetherness were.
    They zipped through downtown, past CenturyLink and Safeco stadiums and finally came to Georgetown—a strip of old brick buildings that housed restaurants and shops, but mostly seemed forgotten, tucked between I-5 and Boeing Field.
    Her dad’s friend, Buck, lived above a bar and you had to take a rickety, outdoor staircase to get up to his apartment.
    As soon as they entered the dusty space, sunlight streaming through dirty windows, a cat with a half tail curling itself around Trix’s leg, Buck offered them cans of Pabst.
    Her dad took one, but what Trix really wanted was more coffee, not to start drinking and dragging so early in the day.
    She bent down and picked up the cat. The backs of his ears were flea bitten and he had no collar. She scratched under his chin. He extended his neck and purred uproariously.
    “That’s David,” Buck said. His laugh sounded like Trix’s mom’s. Heavy with thirty years of smoking.
    Trix cooed his name. “David. Sweet little David.”
    “Want him?”
    She did, as a matter of fact. As soon as he offered, her mind sang, “Yes.” But she said, “Oh, nah. I don’t think I’m around enough to take care of him.”
    “You’d take better care of him than he’s getting here.”
    “My mom would kill me.”
    “Take him!” her dad cajoled. “She’ll get over it.”
    Trix found herself actually considering stealing David home. “Don’t I need, like, a litter box and food?” And a flea comb.
    Buck tossed her half a bag of Friskies and said, “He shits outside.”
    And just like that she had acquired a pet. She hung out with David on the curb while her dad and Buck moved the sofa into the back of the truck. Then, all smashed together in the cab with David crawling around their heads and feet, they drove the couch to Beacon Hill and unloaded it into a small white house surrounded by a chain link fence.
    Buck and her dad shook hands.
    “Can we get a coffee on the way home?” Trix asked.
    “What, you want to stop at Starbucks or something?”
    “No, I don’t do Starbucks.