Read Online The Way Back from Broken by Amber J. Keyser - Free Book Online

should’ve known something was wrong.”
    Over her head, Rakmen could see Dora’s picture on the mantel. Her dark eyes pierced his body. And suddenly he was running. Out the front door, down the steps. He slammed his feet into the sidewalk and pumped his arms until he was an engine, incapable of feeling anything but the urge to go and never come back. He half-slid around the corner, darting through traffic, sprinting past pedestrians. Running trumped thinking and memory and all the things that kept him up at night.
    Rakmen ran until he was a few blocks from Pier Park. His lungs screamed for air and explosions of black dotted his peripheral vision. Sweat dripped into his stinging eyes. He swiped at it with his sleeve, ducked into the shade of the huge firs on either side of the bike path, and collapsed on an empty bench.
    The energy that had propelled him drained away until Rakmen was empty, an old tin can, worthless for anything but target practice. It shouldn’t have been Dora. It should have been him. Then his parents would have held joy between them instead of the hollow space that was Rakmen.
    Minutes passed. Rakmen’s breath slowed and his pulse returned to normal. The steady thump of dribbled basketballs came from the courts up a set of stairs to his left. There were birds chittering up high. A splinter from the rough wooden bench jabbed him in the back of the thigh. He couldn’t move to save his life.
    He couldn’t go home.
    He had no job.
    No family.
    Stuck. He was always stuck.
    Rakmen scuffed the toe of his sneaker in the gravel below the bench and watched an old Hispanic guy in a Parks Department uniform empty the trash can at the base of the stairs. That’d be him in fifty years, hauling bags of other people’s castoffs. Rakmen closed his eyes and dropped his head to his chest.
    A second later, an ear-splitting screech of wood against metal jolted him to his feet. The groundskeeper was still bent over the trash can, but a skateboarder had jumped the stair rail and was skidding down in a blur.
    The old man dove out of the way, the metal trash can lid went flying, and the boarder skidded to a stop.
    Rakmen took the stairs two at a time and knelt beside the groundskeeper. “Are you alright?”
    â€œ Dios mío, que gabacho loco ,” he said as Rakmen helped him up.
    The skater, a gaunt-faced white guy in his twenties, flipped up his board and pulled his knit cap nearly down to his eyes. “Man, I nailed that. You okay?”
    Rakmen wanted to rip his face off.
    â€œYoung man,” said the groundskeeper, brushing dirt and pine needles off his coveralls, “There is a skate park over there.” He pointed through the trees in the direction of the baseball diamonds. “These rails are off-limits.”
    â€œOff-limits for who?” sneered the skater, lighting a cigarette. “Sneak back over the border, old man. I’ll skate where I like.”
    Roaring filled Rakmen’s ears, obliterating the sounds from the basketball court and the distant hum of traffic. An outsized savagery bloomed in his belly and raged through his limbs. Face first. Arms second. He lurched forward, fists clenched.
    The groundskeeper tried to stop him, but Rakmen swung hard from underneath and took the skater in the jaw. The impact ricocheted up his arm, the man’s chin rocketed back, and the cigarette whirligigged in the air.
    Specks of saliva clung to the corners of the skater’s crooked lips. Surprise, then anger, then disgust flashed through his eyes as if he was above fighting someone so worthless. Rakmen’s fists curled again. He wanted to erase that sneer. He threw a wild punch, but this time the skater was ready. He swung his board up hard, connecting with the side of Rakmen’s head and throwing him off-balance.
    Through the reverberations in his skull, Rakmen heard a guttural roar coming from somewhere, his own throat maybe. He lurched forward,