Take Me There Read Online Free Page B

kitchen. Saw the bottle of Crown Royal. Got real thirsty all of a sudden. Decided to pour the whiskey down the drain before it did any more damage.
    There was a room at the end of the hallway that used to belong to me and Wade, but while we were in juvie it got taken over with Mom’s boxes. When we came back home, we found she had moved all our stuff to the garage, which we had to convert into our current bedroom. I stepped inside the box room, Mom’s shrine to order and organization. Testimony to her belief that life could be managed if things were only kept in their proper places.
    On the right were all the boxes for the things Mom hadordered from the Shopping Network—the slicer, the dicer, the blender, the indoor grill, even the fake fur coat, which didn’t get much use in Southern California. If and when we moved again, everything would go back into its original container. There were even a few things, like the do-it-yourself car-waxing kit and the fondue machine, that Mom had never opened.
    On the left side of the room were stacks of white file boxes, each one labeled with a thick black marker: RECEIPTS , TAX RETURNS , BABY PICTURES , etc.
    I hate to admit it, but I liked the box room. Sometimes I would go in there and stand in the middle of the room, just looking at the words on the white boxes. I guess it made me feel good because I could read them. They didn’t jump around, fighting with each other for space, like words on a page did.
    I grabbed a box marked DYLAN from the top of one of the white rows, set it on the floor, and opened it. Inside were old art projects, report cards from a dozen different schools, a pair of booties, and, at the bottom, something I had hidden.
    A map of Texas.
    I opened the map, and the lines and words instantly started dancing. I tried to focus until I found Quincy in the bottom right-hand section. Wade had circled the name of the town for me in red ink one afternoon—when I couldn’t find my glasses. Then I called information and got the number for my grandmother, Levida Dawson, and had Wade write it on the map so I wouldn’t lose it.
    Hadn’t worked up the nerve to call her yet.
    Maybe one day I would just go there and get some answers.
    One day I was going to find out what had happened to make everything turn out so wrong.

THE ROAD TO HUNTSVILLE
by D.J. Dawson
University of Texas Press
     
    Prologue
     
    My name is D.J. Dawson—inmate #892. My home is a ten-by-six-foot cell at the Polunsky Unit just outside of Livingston, Texas. There is one metal bunk with a two-inch mattress in this cage I call my home. One stainless-steel sink and a stainless-steel toilet. A small table stacked with books, an electric typewriter, and a small transistor radio.
    There is one window, three feet wide and six inches tall, but I can’t see outside unless I stand on my bunk, and even then all I get is a view of the guard tower.
    I spend twenty-three hours a day in this cell. I eat in this cell, sleep in this cell, shave in this cell, and crap in this cell. I get one hour a day of solitary recreation in a concrete yard surrounded by chain-link fence. I am not allowed to mix with the general prison population. I am not allowed a television or computer or e-mail.
    Reading about how I live, you might assume I am some kind of psychopath, the sort of beast that must be locked away from society. But the truth is that I’m not that different from you. Not very different at all.
    And that should scare the hell out of you.

6
    I AM DREAMING .
    It’s the same old nightmare.
    I try to force myself awake, but I can’t.
    Something moves me forward, toward the sound of screaming.
    I hear fireworks and think it is the Fourth of July, but then I remember it’s the middle of winter.
    I reach a room with blue curtains, swaying in the breeze coming through a broken window.
    The sound of ticking draws my attention to a clock above a door. The ticking gets louder, like the countdown of seconds until a bomb will