Read Online Raveling by Peter Moore Smith - Free Book Online Page A

Someday I would have trophies like this, too,
     I told myself. I used to pretend that Eric would say those words:
Someday, Pilot, you’ll have trophies like this, too
.

    Upstairs in my room, I could hear my parents and their guests outside raising their voices. I could hear the sound ofall those glasses being filled, of all those ice cubes rattling around inside them. Our mother had recently redecorated my
     bedroom with a racing-car motif, and everywhere were old-fashioned blue-and-white and red-and-white-striped race cars, the
     drivers hunched over the wheels, those funny egg-shaped helmets on their heads, the bold prime numbers—
3, 5, 7
—on their hoods. I lay down, curling up against the sound of all those voices rising into the air outside my open window,
     and I imagined myself in one of those race cars. All those voices became the sound of the engines gunning around the track,
     and I saw myself in one car and my brother in another, and we drove side by side, not trying to outrace each other, neither
     one of us trying to win, but going as fast as we could.

    When I woke up, the house was silent except for the clinking and clanking sounds of my parents collecting glasses and emptying
     ashtrays. It must’ve been three or four in the morning, before any light had crept into the sky at all—pitch black. All the
     windows and doors were still open, and a chill had invaded every room. It felt damp and there was a smell of wet towels. I
     sat up and listened for a bit, hearing my father muttering to my mother every now and then, and after a while I heard nothing,
     so I went downstairs.
    In the living room he sat with his legs far apart, his head down, his hands holding his face.
    “Dad?”
    He rubbed his hands roughly over his eyes and forehead.
    “Dad?”
    He groaned. “Go back to bed, Pilot.”
    “What time is it?”
    “It’s late,” he said. “It’s really, really late.”
    “I never ate anything,” I told him. “I’m really, really hungry.”
    “You’re hungry.” He said this flatly.
    I waited. I was still wearing my polyester Declaration of Independence shirt and the white jeans.
    “You want some cereal?”
    “Okay.”
    “So go get yourself some cereal.”
    “All right already.” I made a face at him, but it was probably too dim to see, so I walked into the kitchen. Hannah was in
     there, humming. “Was it a good party?” I asked.
    “Was it? Oh, I don’t know.” She touched the top of my head, her fingers wet from the sink.
    “I’m hungry.” I grabbed a handful of potato chips from a bowl on the counter. “Can I have a soda?”
    “I’m so tired,” Hannah said. “I’m just so tired. Have you seen your father? Did he go to bed?”
    “He’s in the living room.”
    “Did Eric come home yet?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Will you turn out the lights, dear?”
    I nodded again, and she walked out of the kitchen with the back of her hand to her forehead.
    For a while I ate the chips off the counter and drank a warm Coke. Then I went out to the living room again and saw that my
     father had disappeared. Good, I thought. I sat down on the couch where he had been sitting and rubbed my face the same way
     he had. Now my face was covered in potato chip grease. I lay down and rubbed my face against the rough blue material of the
     couch to get the grease off. Comfortable now, I stayed that way until I fell asleep again. On the couch that night, for the
     first time, I think, I dreamed I was the wolf boy in the woods, naked, running with a pack ofdogs. In this dream the woods behind our house had grown larger and had swallowed the house. I was wild. In the dream I tore
     out the throat of another animal with my bare hands. I opened my eyes from this dream and saw Eric’s fourteen-year-old face
     only inches from mine.
    “You are such a fucking moron,” he was saying.
    “Leave me alone.”
    “I’m going to drag you out into the woods by your feet,” he said, whispering. “I’m