Throw Like A Girl Read Online Free Page A

anything he said he did. It wasn’t exactly lying. It was only things he wished he could do.
    Jovanovich and Goombah started making their racket again, banging things around on the porch. Iris leaned out the window. “Hey!” She wanted to get them out where she could see them. “Hey donkey dicks!”
    The racket stopped. They were probably surprised to hear her from upstairs. Jovanovich’s head popped up at the edge of the porch. Iris couldn’t see the rest of him. It was like his head really was on a stick.
    â€œGuess what I got,” Iris said.
    â€œA face like a bucket of worms.”
    â€œHa. Ha. Ha.” Iris brought the gun up to the windowsill but kept it close in so Jovanovich couldn’t see it.
    Rico was making his asthma sounds again. “I left my inhaler downstairs.”
    â€œWe can go back down in a little.”
    â€œI seriously need it, dude.”
    Rico wheezed and choked some more. Maybe he really couldn’t breathe, or maybe he was just scared of what she was going to do with the gun. Jovanovich was still grinning up at her. He had a pushed-in, piggy kind of face. He would never be anything other than ugly. If she shot him, nobody would ever have to look at him again. That would definitely be something real. Or she could take the gun home and shoot her mother or Kyle.
    Rico was making snoring sounds. Something squeezed inside of her. She bet she had her dumb period again. Rico’s hands were paddling, one on each side of his face. His eyes had that goldfish look. “Oh all right,” Iris sighed.
    She spun the barrel of the gun Russian roulette-style. She shook the bullets out into her hand and showed them to Rico. “See? It’s no big deal.” She threw one bullet down at Jovanovich and it hit the gutter and bounced off. “Bang!” she said. At least the bullets were real. “Bang!”
    In the corner of her eye she saw Mr. Ortiz struggle briefly to keep his balance, then topple over and fall with his arms outstretched and the ropes curling and snapping around him like banners.

The
Five
Senses
    H aving exiled herself forever from her old life, she looked into this new one and found nothing to recognize.
    Here was the ocean. It wasn’t what she expected. Instead of the frill of blue you saw on postcards, it was this enormous swollen rolling mass, gray, like some shaggy wild animal. Jessie—that was her name—had not realized that the ocean was always trying to climb out of itself, out of its space, a brimming cup. And it was huge. She remembered, from school or somewhere, that most of the earth was covered in ocean. Yes, and it wanted the rest of it too.
    It was cold, she hadn’t imagined Florida being cold, that was another thing. She’d left her winter coat back in the room, thinking she didn’t need it, so she walked along with her fingers curled up in the sleeves of her sweatshirt. The sky had no depth or shape to it. Cloud or fog, she couldn’t tell which, or maybe its gray was just the color of cold. Nobody else was out walking as far as she could see. It was just a strip of less desirable, gravelly beach across the highway from the motel. In one direction, far off, were fishing piers and restaurants and the fancy hotels that had their own beaches. At the other end, a scrubby tangle of trees blocked your way. Jessie felt stupid out there alone. She wished she had a dog or something. With a dog you could at least throw sticks.
    She looked for seashells, but the only shells she found were flattened, ordinary, and when she picked up one that was two halves still joined together, she could see something dead inside. Something dim, webbed, and sticky. “Oh God,” she said aloud. “R.B.?”
    But of course he wasn’t there, and if he knew she was getting weird again, something she had promised to quit doing Well it wasn’t just an act, she was weird, she couldn’t help it, you