Read Online Extra Life by Derek Nikitas - Free Book Online

stumbling steps. Didn’t dare look back. I just knew he’d be hot on my trail, some track-star-turned-electrician, reaching out to headlock and drop me for a citizen’s arrest.
    I couldn’t exactly make a stark-naked appearance on one of Cape Fear’s busiest downtown roads, so I cut south through a stretch of warehouse back lots. Hunched and cupping myself, I couldn’t run at peak speed, not while I also had to watch the ground for debris that might slice open my feet.
    The sun’s position in the sky, the dewiness still spritzing the air, the smell of fresh donuts from the bakery down the street… it all hit me like another disorienting flash.
    Morning. It was morning.
    The white light from my phone had somehow blacked me out for hours . Close to twelve hours. Except it wasn’t possible. No way I could’ve hung unconscious from the tower all night long. Heck, I couldn’t have lasted for even a second like that. I should’ve been a dead guy, a splat on the pavement.
    I had to stop my mind-spin and catch my breath. The only choice was to hunker down behind a dumpster. There were probably more fragrant places to gasp for air, but with a few free seconds to think, I quelled the urge to puke and charted my next move.
    Two loading docks down, I snagged cardboard from a recycling stack. Sirens down the street, likely meant for me, the Front Street Streaker. I cut across the main road at full trot, knees knocking the stiff toga I fashioned for myself.
    Some jerk tapped his car horn at me, but I kept my head in the game. Another back lot, a narrow wooded park, and a cemetery where none of the residents gave a damn how I was dressed.
    My last obstacle was a stretch of back yards—uneventful, until I came across a grandma in a housedress, hosing down her lawn. She screeched like I was a scurrying rat. Then she cranked the setting on her nozzle to biting cold Proton Stream and soaked my cardboard clothes into oatmealy goop before I was safely out of her range.
    In another few minutes I was heaving for breath out behind Conrad’s house. He had to be home from the hospital by now, and Connie’s was the closest safe zone I could think of, even if a warm welcome was probably not in store for me. But I was brimming with ready apologies. Funny how a twelve-hour blackout and fifteen minutes of running naked through town could cripple my pride.
    I had to talk this through with Connie. I had to count on his forgiveness, but then again I’d never pushed him so far as I did at the diner, at least not since the prank, before we were friends. Under normal conditions it’d take me at least another day to plan exactly how I’d redeem myself. Connie wasn’t the type of dude where you could just tell him chill out, I’m only screwing and move on. Dealing with him was like constantly making the twentieth move in Jenga.
    The trickier part was that his mom was probably also home, probably sewing together a voodoo doll of me so she could torture it in retribution for her son’s trip to the hospital. So I decided to be discreet. I snuck around to the side yard and tossed pinecones at his bedroom window. Three tries before he peeked through his blinds at me.
    Just as fast, he flicked them shut.
    So that was it. After everything I did for him, not even the decency to hear me out. I snatched a rock the size of a golf ball and prepped for a pitch, but breaking glass wouldn’t earn me any points. So I dropped the rock and trudged away, shivering. Maybe somewhere in this row of houses I could find a stocked clothesline to borrow from, even if it meant I’d have to dress in drag. Nobody’s perfect.
    “Russ, what the heck are you doing?” Connie asked from his back doorway. He stepped onto the wraparound porch, still in his bowling shirt from yesterday. Clean freaks like Connie usually didn’t wear the same shirt twice before washing, but maybe he’d just been discharged from the hospital, hadn’t even had a chance to change.
    “I came to