Read Online Hot Pink by Adam Levin - Free Book Online Page A

so that if anyone wanted to find out if your dog was a machine, they couldn’t. You had to make it weird, too, so that nobody’d say it by accident in front of the dog. The secret kill-command for Franco III was “Nasal spray.” I only ever saw her get told it once—on the twenty-second day in a row me and Franco hung out—but once was enough and I’ll never forget it. Franco’d brought her the bones from a full slab of ribs and she was lying on her stomach in the middle of the yard like a nice normal dog, gnawing and crunching and happy to be there. I wanted to even pet her a little. Then Franco told her “Nasal spray,” and all the sudden it was like there was nothing else in the world to do but kill me. She was chained to the fence so she couldn’t reach me, but I thought she’d pull the posts right out of the ground. She tried to kill me for at least five minutes till Franco said “Scout”—the secret stop-kill command—and then, just like that, she flopped on her stomach and chewed the bones again.
    I finished my grilled cheese—completely delicious, Gino used so much butter—and Franco, on his motorcycle, held out the bag like “Go ahead and have another,” but then when I reached for it, he pulled it back away and I felt even worse because I got no willpower and now I was reminded. I was supposed to be eating 2,000 calories a day. Before I went to Franco’s that day, I already ate 1,570, and then the grilled cheese, and then there’d be dinner, which was gonna be steak because my dad, who’s a pilot, was coming home from Asia.
    Franco III clanged her chain around and barked. Franco lobbed her a grilled cheese. She caught it in her sloppy pink mouth and tore it up. I watched through the diamond-shaped spaces of the fence.
    Franco said to me, “For real, now. Do this no-hands.” And I took a step back and he tossed up a grilled cheese medium-high for me to catch in my mouth. I missed it, though. I’m not good at catching. It bounced off my chin and landed in some gravel, but that was no big deal, even though I knew the three-second rule was bull, cause waxpaper blocks out dirt and germs. Before I was able to pick it back up, though, Franco jumped off his bike and ground it around under one of his Jordans, which completely tore the paper. I told him he ruined it. He said he had something to show me so whatever. He only ever had two things to show me. One of the things was the trick where someone goes, “I got something to show you,” and then they give you a charleyhorse. This thing was the other thing. He started the motorcycle up and revved it. The engine was loud like all the other times.
    â€œYou hear that?” Franco said.
    â€œYeah,” I said.
    Around then’s when this fake-red-haired guy came out the gangway side of Franco’s house. No one ever went out the front door of Franco’s house. I don’t know why. This guy came out the gangway side like everyone else. He was probably sixty years old and was really skinny. He wore that light kind of shades you could kind of see eyes through, eyes that kind-of-seeing made you feel like… what? Like you got caught at something scuzzy.
    The guy tapped a cigarette out of a softpack, turned into the alley, and walked right up to Franco. He said, “Got a light?”
    Franco said, “No. Get the fuck away from us.”
    The guy made a laughing noise and showed us his palms, then he kept on walking, out of the alley and onto the sidewalk. Before crossing the street, he raised his hands to the sides of his head and patted, like to make sure his pasted-down hair was still in place.
    â€œWhy’d you tell him you don’t got a light and fuck off?” I said.
    â€œI don’t like him,” said Franco.
    â€œWhy not, though?” I said.
    â€œI don’t know. Why? You think he’s alright?”
    â€œNo,” I