Read Online Freewill by Chris Lynch - Free Book Online

you?”
    â€œI guess,” you say. “Why are you here?”
    â€œJacks asked me to.”
    â€œYou? He did?”
    Angela shrugs. “I’m the only person ever witnessed talking to you, so I suppose I was a natural choice.”
    â€œNatural enough, I suppose.” You don’t like it, do you, Will? The clinical sound of it. You almost expect her to produce some Department of Social Services paperwork for you to sign, attesting to your still-alivability, so she can be on her way. So. What did you expect then? You make yourself a non-person flyspeck of a creature of no consequence, and then what? Long to be of consequence? You wanted maybe for her to come in on bended knee, begging you to rejoin the race? You wanted her to bring flowers from the class and balloons from Jacks and a teddy bear from the headmaster and a great big gigantic card signed by everyone you don’t know wishing you a speedy recovery and return? Well, unfortunately, you are a victim of your own success. You don’t hardly exist.
    â€œOkay, it wasn’t only that Jacks asked me to do it. I also, maybe, felt a little responsible. Like, you know, the last time I saw you you were asking me to bag out of school with you and I said no. So I thought maybe you were, I don’t know, killing yourself over that.”
    That may have been a joke. You have no idea.
    â€œAnd you wouldn’t want to miss that ,” you say flatly.
    You look at her and she looks back. Refusing to respond. Refusing to acknowledge. Or to deny.
    Fair enough.
    You look at the TV, in that way that tells a person, without pointing or speaking, that you want them to look at what you are looking at. She does not need to be told twice.
    â€œYa, and there’s that,” she says sadly.
    Then you both just watch. It lasts about a minute. Long by local news standards. This is big news in a small town.
    â€œSculpture looks nice, though,” she says. “Everybody says so.”
    Everybody says so. Everybody is saying.
    You look and look until the image goes away and an infomercial for revolutionary cookware replaces it.
    You start nodding, nodding, agreeing with something, long before you begin speaking. She is watching you getting more sure of the agreement, nodding harder and quicker.
    â€œYou want me to go?” Angela asks.
    You continue nodding.
    â€œMy dad drove off the road,” you say.
    This is the first time you have yet caught Angela at all off guard. “Oh,” she says. She starts to say more, but says the same again. “Oh.”
    â€œInto the water. With my stepmother.” You continue tonod, as if you are not telling the story but are instead listening to it, and agreeing with it.
    â€œOh. I’m, you know, sorry. Was this . . . do you mean, like, recently?”
    You nod. “ ’Bout a year ago. He adored Sinatra. Sinatra died right after. The truth is I think my dad was some kind of carrier pigeon of death. The real surprise is that people around him actually lived, not that they died. Or maybe not surprise, maybe accident is a better word. Or mistake, even, is a better word.”
    Angela looks sad. You had not achieved that before. How does that feel? Did you want that? Careless. It is easy to be careless, no?
    â€œBut he did love Sinatra, though. Loved him nuts.”
    He certainly did.
    â€œI’m sorry to hear.”
    â€œYou don’t like Sinatra?”
    â€œNo . . . sorry to hear, about the accident.”
    â€œWasn’t any accident.”
    You do not know that. That is not knowable.
    â€œÂ â€™Scuse?”
    â€œThere was no good reason for them to have gone off the road. They could find no good reason for the crash. He just killed them both. They were only married a year, just like he was with my real mother before she died. Maybe there was,like, a time limit . . .” You shrug. Your great lying cowardly shrug.
    What would they