Twisted Read Online Free Page B

meet you” and grown-up BS about the stock market and going bald. In private, the skin slid off and all you saw were slime-colored scales and poisonous claws because a branch office was in trouble or new regulations were hurting the bottom line.
     
    “Hello?” Dad demanded.
    I closed the door.
     
    Mom’s room was to the right at the top of the staircase. Dad’s was at the opposite end of the hall. Hannah and I were in the middle; her door closest to Mom’s, mine next to Dad’s.
    I flopped on my stomach. My feet hung over the edge of the mattress.
    It was the last Saturday night before my senior year of high school and I was alone in my room.
    The curtains moved.
    Kids were playing kickball in the street, yelling about fouls and do-overs and who was safe. Engines raced and tires peeled out a couple blocks away. Music came from open windows. The train whistle blew. If you took the train to Cleveland, you could pick up the Capitol Limited and ride it to Chicago, and from Chicago, transfer to anywhere.
    I rolled over onto my back and prayed again to every god I had ever heard of to let me die. Quick and painless. Please.
    Death is funny, when you think about it. Everybody does it, but nobody knows how, exactly how. My grandpa Miller just wouldn’t die, no matter how sick he got. Grandma Barnett dropped dead in front of the canned vegetables at the Safeway.
    Did they like it? Was it a relief?
    I wasn’t supposed to think about that, but it was like porn. The idea would sneak in and— boom —I was off. Like when they put me in the holding cell after they arrested me for the Foul Deed, and the guard came back and took the laces out of my sneakers. And then the door locked and my sneakers looked pathetic and I couldn’t walk in them. And I thought about it.
    As soon as it started, I’d go: I’m not going to think about this. No matter what. I am thinking about something different now, thinking, thinking…
    And the pictures would flash over and over in my mind like a demented video with no music, just bodies falling off bridges and planes flying into skyscrapers and fires and ropes and guns and driving very fast. Unbuckling my seat belt. Aiming for the cliff at the granite quarry. Stomping the accelerator. Passing ninety when I hit the edge. Flying, then plunging to the bottom, the car bouncing off the slabs of granite, spinning, crumpling. The explosion.
    Thinking about death relaxed me, as usual.
    My open cuts dripped on the sheets.
    Gone.

11.
    I stumbled downstairs for breakfast around noon. Six fried eggs and a quart of orange juice later, I noticed a vanilla-frosted layer cake, decorated with pink rosebuds, sitting on the counter.
    I reached for a knife just as Mom came around the corner. She slapped my hand. “Don’t touch. It’s not for us.”
    “Who’s it for?”
    “The Milburys.”
    “You made them a sucking-up cake?”
    “This is not a ‘sucking-up cake.’ This is an apology cake, for Bethany’s accident. The last thing this family needs is to have your father fired. So you’re going to deliver it and apologize.”
    “No way. I won’t. I can’t. You don’t understand, Mom—she’s Bethany—she’s the Bethany. She thinks I’m the biggest bag of sh—”
    “Language!”
    “—of manure in the whole state. I am not delivering that cake. You can’t force me. Besides, it’ll piss Dad off if I go over there.”
    “This was your father’s idea, Tyler. If you don’t walk this over to the Milburys this second, you’ll have to deal with him.”

12.
    I came up with a new apology every step of the way.
    Bethany, I am an idiot.
    Bethany, words fail to convey the depth of my sorrow…
    I am really, really, really, really…
    Bethany, beautiful Bethany, wherefore art thou…
    The cake was beginning to sag in the heat. Hurry up, moron.
    After I passed through the entrance gate to the Hampton Club and Estates, I froze. I lifted the cake above my head and sniffed my pits. I should have put on more