Read Online Your Body is Changing by Jack Pendarvis - Free Book Online Page B

looked into his warm black eyes and it was like I could see his ancestors.
    “We should have brought that hash with us,” said Puddin’, who was riding up front. “I could really go for some more hash.”
    “Let’s go to my stepmom’s,” said India. “We could drink her gin while she’s off at spirituality training.”
    India is just seventeen, and I made it clear that I did not condone underage drinking. But I thanked her for her offer of hospitality and said that perhaps Puddin’ and I would have a drink if she and her sheepdog didn’t mind. Her sheepdog barked, which we humorously pretended was his way of voting “yes.”
    India’s stepmom lives in a big mansion full of furniture. We went over and drank some gin in the garage. I suppose the alcoholic content of the gin caused me to become lax, because I noticed that at some point India had become drunken as well.
    Puddin’ and India got silly and started talking about a movie they loved, called Hook. They had a bunch of fun telling tales of how Dustin Hoffman would eat a head of garlic before every scene just to get a certain reaction from his co-stars, in a method acting sense. They giggled and squawked about it until I could tell what they were really signaling to each other: that I had bad breath. Why not just come out and say it instead of making an inside joke? It got on my nerves. I didn’t tell them I was on to them but I left them snickering and noticed it was dark outside.
    My car was back at the tollbooth place so I walked home, about four miles. I live with my parents in a subdivision called King Arthur Courts. I guess I got turned around a few times. Everything in a subdivision looks the same. That’s why Puddin’ hates America. When I finally made it home I noted with some curiosity that there were several plates broken on the kitchen floor. I guess there were some other irregularities as well, which I somehow overlooked at the time. I went back in my parents’ bedroom and got on the internet.
    I Googled myself, which is a little tradition I have. As usual, there was an archival list that mentioned me in conjunction with my old high school’s lacrosse team. This always struck me as hilarious because I never was on the lacrosse team. The supposedly infallible internet is not so infallible after all.
    Believe it or not, there is a man with the same name as mine who runs a petting zoo in White Knob, Idaho. I always enjoy visiting the petting zoo’s web site and clicking on “Recent News.” Usually there is no recent news. Once I sent the other “me” an email about our coincidental similarity of names, but I have never heard back from him. It occurred to me that he might even be dead.
    I was amusing myself in this fashion when I heard the sounds of my father creeping through the house.
    “Hello? Hello?” he was saying. “Junior, is that you?”
    I greeted him in the hallway.
    My father is a portly man with a big, fine head of bushy gray hair. He is around sixty years of age or so, I believe.
    “Where’s Mom?” I said.
    “She’s at the hospital. Two men visited us tonight. They said you owed them fifteen thousand dollars. When we expressed our astonishment, they hit me in the breadbasket five times, knocking the wind out of me. They also twisted my arm behind my back, harshly. These same gentlemen gave your mother two black eyes and kicked her down the front steps. She has a concussion and perhaps some other problems, perhaps a broken back. She’s being kept overnight for observation.”
    “Oh my goodness,” I said.
    “I hate to think you’ve gotten mixed up with these kind of men,” said my father.
    “Fifteen thousand dollars doesn’t sound right,” I said. “I think someone is trying to pull my leg.”
    “Maybe it was fifteen hundred. They broke my false teeth,” said my father. “This is my spare set, and they don’t fit me right.”
    “They should deduct two hundred dollars right off the top,” I said. “I never