Read Online We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier - Free Book Online Page A

floor, her arms encircling Artie, whose face was pressed into the folds of his father’s pajamas.
    Artie began to scream again, lifting his face away from his father’s protection, his eyes open in terror. Then became mute, silent, but holding himself rigid.
    Her mother looked up and saw Jane.
    “A nightmare,” she said.
    But it was not a nightmare. It was sheer terror that Artie could not remember when he finally woke up after a few minutes.
    The terror happened three nights in succession, Artiescreaming and sobbing, eyes wide with horror as if he were witnessing acts so horrible and obscene that his mind refused to acknowledge them. His eyes were always wide open as if he were awake. Crying out inconsolably, he inhabited a private world nobody else could enter, beyond the borders of comfort or consolation.
    On the fourth day, they took Artie to Dr. Allison back in Monument, their old family doctor who had taken care of the family during all their illnesses.
    Dr. Allison ran all sorts of tests in the small clinic he operated. The tests were negative. He said that preadolescent boys sometimes experienced night terrors of this sort. They passed with time.
    “Does he think it’s connected with the vandalism?” Jane later asked her father.
    “Possibly,” her father said, weariness in his voice. “Dr. Allison wants us to keep in touch. He said that it’s easy to deal with what can be seen—fractures, sprains, cuts and bruises. Or symptoms—fever, high blood pressure and such. But it’s difficult dealing with something that you can’t see. He said that in other cases of this sort, time takes care of it.”
    Dr. Allison had been right. A few days passed before Artie’s next nighttime terror. Then they stopped. “Let’s hope forever,” her mother said. Jane and her parents remained tense each evening as bedtime approached and Jane, tossing in bed, felt that a part of them remained awake during the night listening and waiting.
    And Artie? He remained an enigma to Jane and maybe her parents, too.
    He had always been the standard kid brother, similar to the brothers of all her friends. A tease, a pain in the neck sometimes, living in the private, mysterious world of boyhood, secretive, furtive, coming and going but barelytouching her life except when he chose to torment her with his bathroom humor. His vocabulary was filled with words to describe bodily functions with which he plagued Jane when out of their parents’ earshot. He also provided sound effects for those same functions, which drove Jane out of the house, hands over her ears.
    “Is Artie okay?” Kenny Crane called to her one day from across the street while she was out half-jogging.
    She pulled up. “I guess so,” she said, puzzled at the concern on Kenny’s thin face. She crossed over to him. “Why are you asking?”
    Kenny lifted his thin shoulders in a kind of shrug. “I dunno,” he said. “He doesn’t hang out anymore. We used to swap Nintendos but now he’s not interested.”
    “I think Artie’s going through a bad time,” Jane said. “Like everybody does once in a while. But he’ll be all right.” Telling him nothing, actually, because she herself did not know what was wrong with Artie.
    “Artie’s my friend,” Kenny declared, chin lifted, his words sounding like a challenge.
    After that brief talk with Kenny Crane, Jane kept track of Artie’s comings and goings and discovered that he did not play his crazy video games anymore and, in fact, seldom went into his room except to change his clothes after school and go to bed. He wandered the neighborhood and sometimes disappeared for hours on his bike.
    “Where do you go?” Jane asked when he returned from one of his trips and was tightening the bike chain.
    “No place,” he said.
    This had always been his standard answer, even before the vandalism.
    “You had to go
someplace,
” she declared.
    He shrugged, concentrating on the chain.
    “How come you don’t play your