Read Online Reality Boy by A. S. King - Free Book Online Page A

we went.
Ba-bang-ba-boom-ba-bang-ba-boom.
    “This place would sell for a lot, right?” I ask.
    Dad nods. “At least four hundred. At
least
.”
    “We’re not moving,” Mom says. She gets up and opens the lower cabinet next to the sink and retrieves the blender. “I’m not leaving a gated community for some house in the woods. I feel safe here,” she says. Then she opens the fridge and pours some apple juice and yogurt into the blender and starts it.
    Dad yells, “We’d save in community fees. And taxes.”
    Mom hits a higher speed on the blender. We can all still hear the
ba-bang-ba-boom-ba-bang-ba-boom
.
    I say, “Yeah. And we wouldn’t have rats in our basement.”
    Dad gathers the pictures and the MLS papers and stuffs them into his briefcase. Mom stands there pretending like she’s making a smoothie, but we all know she’s not. I get up and walk over to the basement door and kick it before I open it and scream, “Jesus, will you two just
stop it
already? Grow up! Move out! Just shut the hell
up
, will you?” I slam the door.
    Mom turns off her blender and we all look at one another.They look at me like I just shot a bear in the leg or something. Like the bear is about to come at us. I look at them like maybe I’m okay with the bear coming at us.
I can take the fucking bear.
    Seconds later, it starts up again and it’s really loud and she’s moaning extra-vulgar on purpose and Dad gets up and washes off his plate and puts it in the sink and Mom just stands there with her left hand on the blender’s lid and her right hand hovering over the LIQUEFY button and we hear them both—uh—you know—
arrive
—and then, inside of fifteen seconds, Tasha’s in the kitchen in her bathrobe.
    Dad, Mom, and I stand there looking at her for a second: freshly inseminated, hair standing straight up, cheeks pink, last night’s mascara chipped around her eyes.
    “What the hell is your problem, you little prude?” she says to me.
    “Hey,” Dad says. This is his attempt to what? Defend my prudeness? What?
    She walks over to me and shoves me in the chest. She says, “Dick.”
    I stand there and take it. I breathe in. I breathe out. I do not react. I enjoy every millisecond of being
her
trigger instead of her being mine.
    She shoves me again. Mom puts her hand on Tasha’s shoulder.
    “This is my house as much as it’s your house,” Tasha says. “I can do what I want in my room.”
    “Fine,” Dad says firmly—as a sort of gut reaction to make her just go burrow again.
    “It’s not
fine
. He’s messed up,” Tasha says.
    “You make too much noise,” Dad says. “He’s right.”
    “Doug, we offered her a pla—” Mom starts.
    Tasha turns to me. “Why are you so hung up on sex anyway, Gerald?” She stands inches in front of me with her arms crossed. “Can’t get a girlfriend?” I imagine how bad the screams would be if I grabbed her now and stuck her palm on the burner Mom used to make her tea. I picture the perfectly circular ring burns on her fingers. Breathe in, breathe out.
    “Tasha,” Mom says.
    Tasha taunts, “No one wants our fucked-up little crapper.”
    I’m chief all the way. Not a word. Not even a rise in blood pressure.
    She stares at me.
    I stare at her.
    Mom and Dad are frozen for a second and then they say “Hey” or “Whoa” or “Enough.”
    When she sees she isn’t getting a rise out of me, she leans down to my face and puts me in the patented Tasha grip: my nose pinched between her index- and middle-finger knuckles and my mouth held shut by her thumb. She pinches my nose hard and it hurts. She says, “I always knew you swung the other way. That would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?”
    Mom and Dad just disintegrate into two piles of incapable, lifeless flesh. My chief dissolves. My joy is gone. I am brought back. I am drowning right here in the kitchen, surrounded by people who don’t care if I drown. They just stand there, watching. Home snuff movies, reality TV.
    As I