Waste Read Online Free Page A

neighbors. If we could just come inside to maybe address a few issues, we’ll be out of your way as soon as we can. Is your mother or father home at the moment? It’s probably best we take it up with an adult.”
    Elvira told them all about the time her cousin made her eat a snail they’d found on the roof of their apartment building. It had to be magic, ’cause how else could a snail get on the roof? The officers didn’t laugh or humor her. They smelled the rotten food hidden beneath the floating forests Moses Moon had constructed. Their notepads filled quickly.
    Moses Moon was upstairs packing during this one-sided conversation. At twelve years old, he knew he would be taken away by Children’s Aid the moment these policemen finished talking to his mother. He would no longer be able to smoke cigarettes or watch the blurry adult channels on the television. They’d take his mom to a room somewhere where she would be scared and alone and surrounded by machines. These wouldn’t be machines like the dogs. These would be cold and silent, and they would never lick your face when you were sad.
    Moses Moon knew this like he knew the Tyrannosaurus Rex was most likely a scavenging dinosaur and not a major predator. He knew it like he knew his father would never come back from Arizona. This was an undisputed truth he had learned to recognize. They would never let her out of that room again.
    â€œMa’am, would it be all right with you if we went down to examine the basement? We just want to make sure we do a thorough examination.”
    Moses Moon also called a cab company he’d found in the Yellow Pages. He didn’t give an address, but an intersection down the street. He had two hundred and thirteen dollars he’d been storing away from birthdays and the random bills his mother left scattered around the crowded townhouse. She was always forgetting things, like to shower or to tie up her shoes. Moses had got very good at teaching her to do these things all over again. Sometimes she even remembered the next day. Eventually, she might remember everything.
    He packed a bag for his mother too, full of her underwear and socks. He threw in T-shirts and her makeup box and a few cans of her favorite chicken soup. He zipped the bag up and dragged it with his own down the long hallway littered with dog barf and air fresheners that had fallen from the ceiling. He could hear the two men in the basement and the chorus of dogs rattling the heating ducts.
    â€œMoses, did you meet the men who’ve come to check on the dogs?”
    Moses took care of the dogs, but he rarely ever gave them names. Big Bitch, Little Bitch, Jaws, Wheelie. He saw them snapping and biting one another each morning when he went down into the basement. He cleaned up the puddles of piss and the wet turds they hid in the corners, the ones the smaller dogs didn’t eat. Kids at school always asked if he’d shit himself and why his eyes were red. Moses would not miss the dogs.
    â€œWe’re going for a walk, Mom.”
    Moses grabbed a chair from the kitchen. He dragged it over to the basement door and slammed it shut, provoking another round of howls. He could hear the men pounding up the basement stairs two at a time. They bellowed through the fat of their jowls, but Moses could not make out the words. He jammed the chair under the iron knob of the door.
    â€œWe gotta go, Mom.”
    â€œWell, I don’t have a bag, you know that, Mosey. I have to have my bag before I go.”
    Elvira was still wearing her nightgown and the high heels she’d bought with the prize money from her first Bowlarama tournament, the one where she and Ted won the couples category in a six-game sweep over the Johnstones. Ted bowled a turkey. It was glorious.
    â€œI already packed it. You’ve got everything.”
    â€œWhat about the dogs?” Elvira asked.
    â€œI’ve got people to pick them up. Kids from school