There Will Be Lies Read Online Free Page B

walk on the street on my own. She isn’t going to let me go to college.
    But, you know.
    I do think about majoring in English lit.
    Sometimes.
    As I’m thinking, Mark gets called away by someone who’s looking for something.
    Thanks for the book
, I say as he heads away to hunt.
    He turns and says something that I don’t understand, in another language, maybe.
    I read a bit longer, but it’s nearly eight and Mom has a cab booked for me, so I head outside and nod at Mark as I leave – he’s talking to a different patron now, and he smiles back at me. Something twisty happens inside me when he does that. I mean, sure, he’s a year or two older than me. But the guys at the batting cages never made my stomach lift like he does.
    As I’m approaching the door, he’s suddenly beside me. I don’t know how he did that; it’s like he teleported. I stop abruptly.
    Listen
… he says.
Things are … starting to happen. Do you think you could meet me, later? My shift ends in a half-hour
.
    My heart stutters.
I can’t
, I say.
Sorry
.
    I really am sorry – I mean, there’s a part of me that wants to. A big part. But I’m not stupid: he’s a man and much stronger than me, and if I meet him somewhere alone, somewhere that isn’t a library, he could overpower me, he could do anything he wanted to me. He’s hot and he’s kind and I like him, but he’s still a man.
    He’s still dangerous.
    So I lower my eyes like my mom does and I turn away from him, just catching his frown out of the corner of my vision. But I don’t turn back.
    Outside, the automatic door closes behind me and my cocoon vanishes, and the heat rushes into the vacuum, like air into lungs, and in fact the heat is in my lungs, so it’s outside me and inside me all at once.
    Ugh. Sometimes I feel like I’d like to have some cold in my bones, like Mom, to carry around with me in Arizona.
    I go out on to the sidewalk, and walk to the spot where the cab will pick me up. I glance at my watch – it’s about four minutes before she’s due to arrive, and she always arrives when she’s due.
    I stand there for a moment, holding the book. I don’t know how I’m going to explain it to Mom. I guess I’ll just say it’s from the library and hope she doesn’t look inside and see that it doesn’t have a stamp.
    I look at my watch again. Three more minutes, and then Mom will be there to take me home.
    But no.
    That doesn’t happen.
    What happens instead is:
    A car, which is actually a Humvee, and as it will turn out is being driven by a driver considerably under the influence, bouncesup on to the sidewalk, takes out a trash can, slows just enough not to kill me instantly, then collides with my body hard enough to throw me ten feet through the air.
    Lying there, on the concrete, I don’t feel any pain at first. I am on my side and there is a warm trickling feeling all over my leg which doesn’t seem to forebode anything good, though I can’t just now remember how I got to this position.
    I am facing the library, or at least the gap between the library and the next building, which I think is a software company. In the cool dark shadow between the buildings, I see two eyes, gleaming.
    A coyote steps out and towards me, right there in the dusk. I’ve never seen one before – I know people do at night, especially in North Scottsdale, but he’s my first. I sense that it’s a he.
    He, the coyote, comes closer and sniffs at me. He’s beautiful – this wild thing, here in low-rise suburbia. Like walking into a bedroom and seeing a tree growing in there. His fur is red like sunset, his eyes are shining and telling me something that I don’t know how to read, but there’s a kind of light of intelligence in them.
    I think: Of course, it’s not a dog, Mark’s tattoo. It’s a coyote. I don’t know why I thought it was a dog.
    I stare at the coyote. There’s a crackle about him, almost a halo, like his life is running at a voltage different from other living