Read Online We Won't Feel a Thing by J.C. Lillis - Free Book Online Page A

softly.
    “It’s a hypothetical example,” said Rachel.
    “You don’t think this happened?”
    “David’s love life is irrelevant .”
    “Look at this score,” said Riley. “He got a 1,784.”
    “I’m sure our scores won’t be that high.” Rachel clicked CLOSE and the document vanished. “I mean, I’m not obsessed with you.”
    “I’m not obsessed with you, either.”
    “Good.”
    “Good.”
    “Let’s start,” said Rachel.
    “Now?” Riley chinned the umbrella.
    “It’ll be fun.”
    “I need to fix the wave mosaic. Miss Laurie’s picking it up in—”
    “Let’s fix us first.” Rachel plugged the tablets into the console and jabbed button 1. The tablets blinked, then flashed SCREENER LOADED. She unplugged them and passed one to Riley. “I’m thinking we work straight through till we’re done. No talking, no snack breaks, no bathroom breaks…What?”
    “You’re a very cute taskmaster.”
    “Okay, I’m putting an embargo on compliments.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Let’s set a time limit.”
    Riley thought. “Two hours.”
    “For real?”
    “Essay questions take time.” Riley bit at his thumbnail. “Also, I might write mine in sonnet form.”
    “Ri, if you don’t take this seriously—”
    “Okay.” Riley held up his palms. “No jokes. I promise.”
    Rachel set the mermaid clock for two hours. She stared at Bob and Athena, at the hairline fracture where their hands met.
    “Do you hear that?” said Riley.
    “What?”
    “That sound.” He shuddered. “Like…drums.”
    Rachel tilted an ear to her window. She thought she heard it too—a hollow thrumming sound, like bongos in the near distance. She went to the window and shoved it open. Nothing. Normal Donnybrook Lane sounds: wind shushing through cottonwoods, the bzzt bzzt of the neighbors’ bug zapper, a faint tingle of brass windchimes. A full moon peered through the trees in a sinister shade of red-orange. It’s watching us, she thought, and then pinched herself for being irrational. She shut the window. Then she locked it, too.
    “It’s nothing,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
    ***
    With fifteen minutes left on the clock, Riley gnawed the remnants of his thumbnail, stuck on the end of the essay. Sniffles perched on his art desk. Riley blinked at the poodle’s rheumy eyes, at the drop of glycerin his father had lovingly pearled in the dog’s left nostril. Dead animals had been staring at them for years, but there was something especially sad and sympathetic about this one. He reached over and stroked the coarse gray fur lightly, so his fingers wouldn’t register the body’s lack of warmth. He’d always wanted a real dog. It’s okay, boy, he thought, feeling silly and tender and wrung out. Everything’ll be okay.
    He watched Rachel finish on her side of the room—she was always first to complete their homework. The decisive blip of her submit button deflated him. She zipped up her red sweatshirt with the silkscreened ravens, the one she always wore when they fished for sunnies at Solomon’s Pond in early fall, and Riley wished he were writing about the Peloponnesian War so he could ask her for help. She plucked her feather barrette from the seashell jewelry box he had made and clipped her hair back.
    “Going downstairs for a bit,” she said, grabbing their laptop. “You want anything?”
    Riley tugged at his deviant curl. He eyed the strange moon outside their window. He wanted everything. He wanted to say something perfect, something that would make her walk over, take the tablet from his hands, and shock him with the kind of kiss he practiced by himself late at night underneath his blue plaid comforter, his index and middle fingers standing in for lips.
    “I’m good.” He forced a grin. “Tell the deer heads I said hey.”
    When she was gone, Riley tapped out an end to his final paragraph and hit submit before he lost courage. He set the tablet face down on his mattress and went back to work on his