Read Online Bad Kid by David Crabb - Free Book Online

cafeteria beside Patty with a few other friends when I felt something on my crotch. I looked down to see Patty’s pasty meat-paw between my legs.
    â€œPatty,” I whispered, trying not to make a scene.
    â€œIt’s okay, David,” she whispered, petting her crucifix with her free hand. “I’ve been praying about this. And God thinks it’s okay.”
    I’d reached my breaking point. It was time to step things up. That night, I came up with the perfect plan.
    A few days later at lunch, I sat next to Patty as she brushed her hair. Once finished, she laid the chunky purple brush downon the table. I picked it up and began gathering a clump of hair from the bristles.
    â€œDavid, what are you doing with my hair?” she asked with a confused half smile.
    â€œOh, nothing,” I said, feigning surprise at being caught. “I just want a little piece of you with me all the time.” I flashed her a creepy smile and stared too hard into her eyes.
    â€œOh,” she stammered. “That’s . . . nice.”
    â€œI have to go the bathroom,” I said, knocking a large book out of my backpack and onto the ground as I walked away.
    â€œYou dropped something,” I heard Patty say as I left, but I pretended I didn’t.
    The book Patty picked up was The Complete Book of Spells, Ceremonies and Magic , a thick purple tome full of tarot advice, astrological charts, and exorcism how-tos. I’d taken it from my mother’s bookshelf, where it lived between Stephen King’s Cujo and a forensics hardcover called Explorations in Criminal Psychopathology . The book was fairly harmless, but I hoped that once Patty found what was hidden in the front cover, she’d be running for her life, clutching her little necklace all the way.
    A few minutes later I returned to find the table vacated, save for my witchcraft book, which was full of voodoo-doll sketches and a week’s worth of Patty’s stray hairs.
    That afternoon, Patty’s very timid mother called me at home when my mom was at work.
    â€œI’m sorry to say that, um,” she gulped, her voice withering at the other end of the line, “and I’m sorry if this is upsetting, but Patty can’t . . . Well . . .”
    â€œGo ahead, Mrs. Marks,” I said calmly, trying not to laugh. As perverse as it sounds, I got a certain thrill in being dumped by a forty-two-year-old woman at the age of fourteen.
    â€œWell, Patty would not like to see you anymore, David.”
    â€œOh, really,” I replied, trying to sound heartbroken.
    â€œAlright, now. I have to go,” she said as Patty whispered something in the background. “You take care.”
    Mrs. Marks hung up, and the line went dead. As the dial tone hummed in my ear, I took a deep breath, feeling accomplished. I was finally free. And in the silence of my bedroom I was alone. As this new reality struck me, so did the dread of how lonely I’d been before Patty came along. And for just a second, as badly as I’d wanted to be Patty-less a few hours earlier, I wondered if her serpentine tongue lashing at my face was really such a bad thing after all. This wasn’t a new reality—it was a step back into an old one.
    Without a girlfriend, whatever self-delusion of heterosexuality I’d achieved was gone. After a week of solitude all my fears came back, stronger than before: fear of God, fear of my family, fear of my peers, and fear of AIDS. I spent that spring break by myself. As other kids my age went to the beach or movie theater, I sat in my room, masturbating to the underwear section of a Sears catalog. Once, afterward, I thought I’d gotten sperm in a paper cut on my finger. This sent me into a tailspin—I worried that my body wouldn’t realize that it was my sperm. If it mistook the semen as another male’s, my body would know I was gay and instantaneously manifest HIV in my blood, because any gay sex act