Read Online The Other Normals by Ned Vizzini - Free Book Online Page A

it?”
    “Sometimes, yeah,” I admit.
    “Are we all being civil in here?” a voice calls from across the room.

30
    A DOOR, CARVED SURREPTITIOUSLY INTO the wall, has opened a crack. A man pokes his head in. It’s a bald, pugnacious head.
    “Everything’s fine, Gamary,” Mortin says, rushing to close the door. The person outside, Gamary, pushes back. “Who’s that ?” he asks. He gives me a stern look. His head is very high off the ground.
    “I’m just … Perry Eckert; pleased to meet you.” I stick my hand out.
    “Mortin!”
    Gamary shoves the door open and knocks Mortin over. He steps into the chamber, and I see why his head is so far off the ground: it’s attached to a short torso that turns into a large potbelly that turns into light-brown fur on top of four hoofed legs .
    “Centaur!” I blurt, like a kid yelling out the name of a dinosaur at a museum.
    “Mortin, I told you, no more tweaks!”
    Gamary kneels on his two front legs and starts punching Mortin. Mortin scrambles away and reaches behind a barrel.He pulls out a short, unadorned sword and tosses it from one hand to another.
    “Don’t touch me, okay? I paid for this space.”
    “No illegal transits!” Gamary reaches for a saddle mounted on his own back and pulls out an ax. Crap. I back up, flabbergasted, but as animal fear kicks in, some analytical part of me notices that he’s too small to be a real centaur. His lower half is six feet long, not ten like a full-grown horse. He looks more like a man on top of a deer, with horizontal stripes on his forelegs and backward-pointing knees.
    Gamary and Mortin circle each other. Mortin jabs with his sword. Gamary easily blocks with his ax. Sparks sprinkle toward the ground and the thakerak buzzes as if in answer. I can’t tell if they’re just playing or if they’re really trying to hurt each other. They’re very talkative.
    “My father rented thakeraks from your father, and you won’t even give me the courtesy of a little privacy?” Mortin slaps Gamary’s leg with the flat of his sword.
    “Your father wasn’t a degenerate pebble addict like you are!” Gamary brings his ax down a centimeter from Mortin’s foot.
    “That’s my medicine! Don’t talk about my medicine!” Mortin slashes at Gamary’s hand.
    “You brought over some scared human child who’s going to soil himself on my property!”
    “Hey! I’m not gonna soil anything!”
    In sync: “Shut up!”
    “Stop it, both of you!” Ada rushes between Gamary andMortin. Gamary holds his ax over his shoulder. “This boy is the one we were telling you about,” she says. “The one who has to do with the princess.”
    “Princess?” I ask.
    “Ada! Quiet!”
    “Him?” Gamary inspects me.
    “What princess?” I want to know more. The word princess has a seminal place in my head. But instead of giving me answers, Gamary stands over me, putting me in a shadow of candlelight. “You sure you got the right one? He seems a little small. And dumb. He called me a centaur.”
    “I know you’re not a centaur,” I say. “You’re too small.”
    “Excuse me?” He raises his ax. “You want to go home in two pieces, princess boy?”
    “Gamary!” Mortin shoulder-checks him. He drops the ax. Ada grabs it and locks the door. Mortin raises his sword and holds it against Gamary’s neck. “Don’t touch him.”
    “What do you want me to do? If the authorities find him”— me —“they’re gonna have me arrested!” Gamary twitches his tail. “My daughter’s sick, Mortin. The bad fever. As soon as I can, I’m taking her to Laurentia for medicine. I can’t do that if I’m rotting in a cell, you understand?”
    Mortin puts his sword down.
    “So you’re gonna send him back, right? So long as you send him back, it’s no problem.”
    “Yes, we’ll send him back.”
    “When?”
    “A few minutes.”
    “Back where?” I ask. “Back to camp ? No way!”
    “He doesn’t sound like he wants to go back.”
    “Don’t worry.