Read Online Zen and Xander Undone by Amy Kathleen Ryan - Free Book Online Page B

because it’s got so many abandoned skeletons of trains, left to rust as the sumac and thistles grow up around them. Xander turns around and yells, “Come on!” at the top of her lungs. Adam and I creakily get up to follow her. He helps me stand and keeps his hand on my back as we walk. “You okay?”
    â€œUgh,” I explain.
    â€œWhere does she get the energy?” he mumbles.
    â€œShe sucks the blood of babies when their parents are asleep,” I tell him.
    He gives me a cockeyed look. “You have a dark side.”
    That makes me smile. Finally someone noticed.
    Our town is cut in half by railroad tracks. Always at noon a big freight train rumbles through town, drowning out conversations with its whistle and bringing traffic to a complete standstill. Adam, Xander, and I like to go sit on the pedestrian overpass that runs over the tracks and watch as the train zooms underneath us.
    We get there just in time. Xander sits dangling her legs while Adam and I stand next to her, watching for the train. Six sets of tracks snake underneath us, some of them littered with dormant boxcars. The trees in this part of town are thick, and the bridge we’re on is so high that it looks like we’re floating over a sea of leaves waving in the wind. It smells green, and you can see forever from up here.
    We hear the whistle before we see the train. Adam squints at it.
    â€œWhat’s on it?” Xander asks.
    I peer through the haze at the long line of cars approaching us. “Looks like coal?” I say, and turn to Adam.
    â€œLumber too,” he says. He has the sharpest eyes.
    â€œOkay, get ready!” Xander screams.
    The train roars toward us, its metal heart thrumming. Adam and I stand on either side of Xander. I grab hold of the railing and stare at the engine as it surges toward us, getting bigger and bigger so quickly! Just when it looks like it’s about to crash into us, Xander lifts up her shirt, screaming at the engineer: “Honk if you’re a pervert!”
    He couldn’t have heard her, but he responds with a few sharp notes of his horn as the train booms under the bridge, car after car blurring by, its thunder shaking our bones.
    When the train is gone, I say to Xander, “You don’t have to flash them. They toot their horn anyway.”
    â€œIt’s a rush,” she says, no hint of apology or shame. “You should try it next time.”
    I roll my eyes and look at Adam, whose thin face is alight with a smile.
    He’s staring at Xander like he’s never seen a girl before.

Nancy
    W E WALK BACK home slowly, each of us in our own thoughts. Maybe they’re thinking the same thing I am. That pretty soon we’ll be spread out over the East Coast. Adam will be going to NYU to study biology; Xander will probably go to MIT in Boston. And I’ll be stuck here, just me and Dad in a quiet house.
    Xander drives me nuts, but I still dread the day she leaves us. She’s practically my whole social life. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to have other friends. It’s just that after dealing with Xander twenty-four hours a day, I don’t have the energy for anyone else.
    â€œSo, Adam,” Xander says with a sly look at me as she kicks at the little bits of gravel in the gutter. “What would you say if I told you that our mom might have had an illicit affair?”
    This makes me so mad that I punch her shoulder, which sends a bolt of pain through my back.
    â€œYour mom wasn’t selfish enough to do something like that,” he says angrily. Adam’s dad had an affair with a woman at work, another lawyer, and ran off to Boston to be with her. Adam goes to see him only four times a year, and when he comes back home he’s in a bad mood for at least a week. “Believe me. Your mom wasn’t the type.”
    â€œThen explain this.” Xander grabs his hand and pulls him over to sit on a park bench under a