Read Online Sorry You're Lost by Matt Blackstone - Free Book Online

doesn’t have a name, but it’s oily, misshapen, and has angel wings on the sides of my head. Some people may call it an angel haircut, but I haven’t yet met those people.
    It’s only five o’clock, but it’s almost dark. Like some pesky freeloading guest, winter has come and never left. (Leave already, February, you’re no longer wanted.) Some of the trees have tiny buds, but most of them look like bald, hunchbacked old men.
    When I’m a block away from my house, I hide behind a bald tree and peek down the block to see if my dad’s rusty green Buick is parked in the driveway. Of course it is, right on schedule. He’s a salesman at some fancy antiques store where they sell old clocks for thousands of dollars, so he’s always well aware of the time. And now, at precisely 5:10 p.m., it’s nearly time for him to make mad, passionate love to the object of his desire. I’ve seen it more than I should, and it’s embarrassing and hideous and wrong. At first he takes it slow, nibbling on the outside of the legs and thighs, but then he loses control and his mouth becomes a ferocious tiger and his fingers get shaky and violent. He doesn’t come up for air until he’s good and satisfied and full. He barely ever wipes his mouth, not until the end.
    He sure loves his fried chicken.
    I take a few more minutes, allowing maximum time for him to complete his meal before finishing my trek home.
    My house, like everyone else’s on our block, is a ranch. There are no horses or farmers at my ranch. My house is called a ranch because it’s a one-story house with a basement. The laundry room is in a long, dark corridor in that basement. There’s only one light in the laundry room, which you can’t turn on until you’re halfway through the darkest part of the darkest room in the house.
    When I was younger, I hid there in the shadows. No windows or candles. Black as night. I sat cross-legged on the cold floor and invented games. When my mom came down to do laundry, I hid behind an old wooden dresser, and when her footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs, I pretended to be a ghost, a hideous ghost, from generations past. My mission was to scare to death the humans who moved in on my property. They had to pay for their sins in the worst possible way. Starting with this lady of the house.
    My mom’s bare feet swished across the floor as her fingers felt their way through the darkness. In the middle of the room, she groped for the light switch, but right before her hand could find the switch, I leaped out of my hiding spot and, ghost that I was, screamed as loud as I possibly could, “BOO!”
    The laundry room isn’t used anymore. My dad won’t go near it. Every few weeks, he drops off our clothes at the laundromat. He doesn’t cook, either. Twice a week he loads up on fried chicken.
    When I was younger, my mom ran the kitchen with two golden rules: you can’t mix sugar cereals (a Trix and Lucky Charms combo was a no-no), and no fried chicken. She forbade it from entering the house, citing my dad’s high cholesterol.
    â€œPlease, honey,” my dad would beg.
    â€œOh, stop groveling,” she’d say. “I’m doing you and Denny a favor.”
    In place of my mom, I got fried chicken and a week full of leftovers.
    I open the front door. The microwave is humming, which can mean only one thing. My dad hasn’t eaten yet. Crap.
    He’s at the kitchen table in a red-collared shirt washed so many times (by the cleaners) that it now looks like dusty brick. His skin is pale and stubbly, his cheeks a faint red, as if they’ve been washed a few too many times as well (but they haven’t; he could use a shower). His unblinking eyes are stuck on the television. He doesn’t even hear me come in until I drop my backpack in my room. “Time for dinner!” he shouts.
    Really not in the mood. For the food or the