Read Online Paranoid Park by Blake Nelson - Free Book Online

to school, I noticed this church down the road from my school. It was in this big building that used to sell lawn mowers and gardening stuff. I figured it probably wasn’t a very good church if they put it in an old lawn mower shop. But it made me think about the church thing again.
    So that day after school, I took the bus downtown to the church my family went to on Christmas. It was weird being downtown. I hadn’t been there since Saturday. Getting off the bus, I was checking all around like I was a fugitive. When I saw a cop car, my whole body froze up.
    But I kept moving and eventually found the church. It was a big stone building with thick oak doors. The lawn out front was perfectly groomed, with flowers and green grass and little walkways on the sides.
    I went up the smooth stone steps in front. I pulled open the heavy door and instantly got an eerie feeling in my stomach. Inside, it was quiet, hushed; the red carpet was spongy under my feet. I proceeded cautiously forward.
    No one seemed to be there. Which seemed odd. It was totally empty. Was that possible? Wasn’t there supposed to be someone there?
    I figured you must be allowed in, since the door was open. I crept forward and looked around. It was completely empty.
    I didn’t want to go too far inside. I sat on one of the benches, near the back. They were beautiful polished wood. Everything was super nice. I started to wonder if a priest in a high-class church like this would understand something like what happened to me. Probably stories involving skateboarders and Paranoid Park and people named “Scratch” were not their specialty.
    I sat. I stared forward. The quiet and the stillness started to get to me. For some reason I thought of Henry. I pictured him at home, ignored, overlooked, crashed in front of the TV night after night. No Dad. Mom freaking out. His big brother locked in his room with his own terrible secrets. My family: We were disintegrating.
    I started to cry. There was already so much pain in the world. And what had I done? I had made it worse. I had made it so much worse.
    After I’d cried, though, I felt better. And then I started having strange thoughts. I looked around and wondered why people didn’t steal stuff from churches. There was no one supervising, and there was all this stuff—benches and books, maybe some of the metal stuff was gold. I checked the ceiling for cameras. I was glad I hadn’t said anything out loud. They probably thought I was some kid crying because my dog died. I wish my dog had died. But no, I didn’t wish that.
    Then something even more weird happened. When I walked out of the church, I felt awesome. I felt like the biggest shitkicker. I strutted down the street like, Don’t mess with me, muthafucka. I stared at these girls in the park like, You think your boyfriends are tough? You don’t know tough!
    But that was so evil and wrong, and just as suddenly, I felt so awful I could barely walk. What was wrong with me? I would have cried more, but I was cried out. I wondered how long it would take for this to wear off. I tried to imagine myself in five years, or ten; would I ever be able to just walk down the street?
    And that was the best- case scenario. There was still the possibility of getting caught.
    I walked more. I watched the downtown people heading home from work. They wore suits and business clothes and got into nice cars. They probably had stuff in their past-mistakes, bad things they’d done. Everyone must. I thought about soldiers in Iraq, in Vietnam, and every other war. They had to kill people. And they had to live with it. Soldiers through all of history did. And it wasn’t like killing people was some bizarre event that never happened. Someone got killed on TV every two point five minutes. All you did in video games was kill people.
    But what were you supposed to do with that weight? Once it was on you? Just be a man? Just suck it up? Maybe you were. Maybe that was the real test. Maybe