Read Online Forever Freaky by Tom Upton - Free Book Online Page B

look at the mirror, sitting
there with my feet dangling above the floor.
    We waited, with neither of us saying a word.
Since I’d met him, this was the longest I witnessed Jack not
running his mouth. One part of me wanted to read his mind, but the
other part didn’t want to know anything. What if he was thinking
something weird? What if that weird something had to do with me?
What if I just got static, like you get when you tune into an open
radio signal? No, I decided for sure; it was best not to know. You
must never let yourself believe that somebody is thinking something
that will make you happy.
    The room was getting colder. At first I
thought it was my imagination, but then goose-bumps started to rise
on my bare arms. I hadn’t been anticipating an Arctic blast. All I
wore were jeans, gym shoes, and a light t-shirt. I never wore socks
or a bra, because to me neither seemed to serve much of a
purpose.
    I hugged myself to try to stay warm, but it
did no good. And my feet felt like two pieces of ice. So I slid off
the counter and paced the floor again, hoping that would help keep
me warm.
    Jack watched me walk back and forth, sitting
placidly on the floor with his legs crossed before him. He didn’t
seem the least bit bothered by the chill.
    “Aren’t you cold?” I asked.
    “I have warm blood,” he said.
    “Lucky you.”
    I checked the stalls again. Everything was
the same, except that a thin layer of ice had formed on the water
in the toilet in the second stall. The wall in there felt somewhat
colder than the walls in the other two stalls.
    “I think she vanished from the middle stall,”
I said, and told him about the ice. “Do you know if anybody
complained about it being cold in here?”
    “No,” he said. “I heard some of the girls
said that it seemed too warm, but, you know, that was during the
day.”
    I supposed that made sense, in a way. “What
time is it?”
    “Eleven-fifty,” he said, after glancing at
his watch.
    If he was right about the whole midnight
thing, something should happen soon.
    I sat on the floor across from him. We stared
at each other for a moment. He really wasn’t such a bad guy. If I
weren’t such a freak, I might even consider dating him. I realized
that every time I’d got mad at him, it was because of my issues,
not his. He had only been trying to treat me as a normal human
being. His mistake had simply been in not understanding how truly
abnormal I was. As I thought about all this, I started to
experience an unpleasant irritating feeling that I was pretty sure
was guilt. It was not a feeling with which I was familiar, because,
frankly, I was not a caring person. You have to care first to end
up feeling guilty later.
    “I have to be honest with you,” I said.
    “You’re really madly in love with me, too,
but afraid to admit it?”
    “Uh—no, not even close. What I didn’t tell
you—and should have—was that earlier today I passed by and tried to
get a read on the room, and, well, I heard something growling in
here.”
    “Growling?”
    “Yeah, like some kind of—I don’t know—wild
animal.”
    He blinked his eyes, and then stared at the
floor thinking for a moment, before looking back up at me.
    “And you’re telling me this now?”
    “To be fair to you, so you can leave before
it’s too late, just in case--” I shrugged—“Mary Jo actually got
eaten by something.”
    He frowned. “You’re making this up, right?”
he asked.
    I shook my head.
    “Growling, really?” he asked.
    “Feral growling,” I said.
    “And so,” he said, still trying to figure
things out, “you’re telling me this and expecting me to run
away.”
    “I’m not expecting anything. I’m just telling
you, to be fair. So if you want to stay, stay. If you want to go,
go. It doesn’t matter to me either way.”
    “It doesn’t matter if I leave you here
alone?”
    “No, why would it? I mean, I’m stuck with
this weird stuff. I don’t really have a choice. You do.”
    “I