Read Online How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers - Free Book Online Page A

didn’t have much. He got a card congratulating him on his Bat Mitzvah, thinking that it was funny, knowing that Adam, who had to be told when to laugh, wouldn’t get the joke.
    Outside, it was summer. He bought a glass-blue Sno-Kone, wrapped in the same weak waxy paper they’ve been using for a hundred years, from a tiny man with a cart. He held it gingerly between his fingers. It was glorious, really too perfect to change. He didn’t want to eat that ice—it was so right, that blue dome, like a tiny lost moon he could hold in his hand.
    It began to melt, so he ate it in gulps.
    He returned home, thinking maybe he should wait another day, or even two. The sooner he got there, really, the sooner Adam would feel well enough to leave the hospital, and the sooner he’d try it again. The longer Adam was in the hospital, probably restrained in some effective way, the better. He was content, Fish was sure. Adam was always content in a hospital.
    At two-thirty, Fish called the rental place and they said they were on their way and could he give them his address again. He did, and waited.
    At three o’clock, he called the place again and it was a new guy on the phone. New guy said he had no record of Fish’s reservation. “You know,” Fish said, “that’s messed up. I’ve been waiting forever and I have to get down to goddamned Bakersfield.” New guy sighed and said he’d look again. Then he got back on the phone and said that he was sorry, that he’d found the reservation posted on the bulletin board.
    “
Someone,
” he said, “put it up on the board without telling anyone else.” He was directing this to some nameless offscreen coworker.
    “Sure,” Fish said, “but isn’t that what the goddamned board is for, so you don’t have to tell everyone about it?” Fish wanted a look at that office. “Jesus,” he added. “That’s really fucked.”
    “Well, I am sorry,” new guy said.
    “I have a friend in the hospital, motherfucker.” Fish was surprised; he hadn’t contemplated that sentence. He realized that this was one of those moments when one’s impatience— or was the word
rage
?—was being misdirected. All the same, he thought he’d very much like to beat the new guy till he whispered.
    New guy told Fish someone would come get him soon, and then hung up. Fish went into the tiny yellow yard in front of his house and took the croquet wickets out of the grass. They’d been sitting there for three months, since Mary’s kids had been over. They couldn’t play to save their lives, those kids. They didn’t care about the rules, either. They just hit the balls like monkeys, squawking and swinging and running into the street.
    Now it’s seven o’clock, with two hours to go. This drive mocks our conceptions of time. This drive could kill anyone.
    Adam’s mouth curves too much. He’s never been able to smile without smirking, or listen without sneering. It isn’t his fault, really. He just has too many muscles there, in that area around his mouth. Most people are born handicapped.
    He moved away, to Baltimore, just before high school, so Fish didn’t see him much, but one summer, right after Adam’s parents separated and he and Fish were too old for camp, Adam stayed with Fish’s family in Galena. At first he slept in the basement, next to the dartboard and under the tiny window half-full of soil. When he complained about the ticking and groaning of the water heater, he was moved to Fish’s bedroom. It was a small room with a single window, over Fish’s bed, painted shut, the lower corners covered in stickers with holograms and google eyes.
    That summer, when Adam played football with Fish’s friends every Sunday at the muddy round park at the end of the frontage road, he tackled too hard and argued too much. Fish apologized for him. Everyone figured he was just intense, had something to prove, like the kids who’d tried out for the team but missed the last cut. Adam, though, was different,