Read Colt for Free Online Page B

left him, and instead he felt deeply excited, earnest, sincere. He was an experimenter on the verge of a breakthrough. “Say it! What were you about to say?”
    Rosie grabbed the sponges dripping on his bed and threw them across the room.
    â€œSay it!” Colt begged. “Please!” Rosie had been about to call him names, and he very much wanted to hear them.
    Rosie glowered. “Can’t,” he muttered.
    â€œWhy not ?”
    â€œBecause Dad told me—” Breathing heavily, wiping gunk off his ankle with the one remaining sponge, Rosie panted out the words. “Because—Dad—told me to try to get along with you, no matter how much of a brat you were.”
    â€œReally?” Colt was so delighted his voice squeaked. “Your dad said I was a brat?”
    Rosie stared at him.
    â€œDid he really say I was a brat?” Colt insisted. “I mean, that’s the word he used and everything?”
    No longer angry, Rosie looked less like a madman and more like Liverwurst: wide-eyed, bewildered. “Why the heck,” Rosie pleaded, “do you want people to call you a brat?”
    â€œBecause …” Colt could not explain how being a brat made him real. How most people, looking at him, saw only the handicap, the braces and crutches, the wheelchair, and felt they had to be nice to him no matter what. Therefore, he had to make them not be nice to him. No matter what. “Just tell me what your father called me,” he said.
    â€œWhat kind of trouble are you getting me into?”
    â€œOh, okay.” Colt saw Rosie’s point of view. For a moment he slumped against Rosie’s bed, discouraged, but then his head came up. “Do you think I’m a brat?” he demanded.
    Rosie looked straight at him. “You are an incredible brat.”
    It was a moment too good for smiles. Rosie understood. Rosie saw past the crutches to Colt.
    â€œYou might be the top brat of all time.” Rosie stood up to examine his legs. Even in the dim bedroom light the half-shaved effect was startling. “Aw, maaan,” Rosie lamented. “Aw, CRUD! What the heck am I gonna do? I can’t wear pants and run.”
    The room light flicked on, making Colt and Rosie cower a moment in its glare. At the door stood Brad and Audrey Flowers, roused by Rosie’s yelling. They did not seem totally sleepy. Apparently they had been listening for a few minutes. So it was no use trying to pretend nothing was happening, and anyway the room reeked of hair remover, and Rosie was standing there with two-tone legs.
    Brad looked blank. Colt’s mother looked horrified. “Colt Vittorio,” she burst out with tears in her voice, “how could you?”
    It occurred to Colt that he was the only one in the house whose last name was not Flowers. He felt left out of something good, and guilty that he had upset his mother. He didn’t mind making her mad, but he hated to hurt her. “Sorry, Mom,” he mumbled.
    â€œIf this is the way you’re going to act—”
    Brad’s quiet voice interrupted her. “Well, Son,” he said to Rosie, deadpan, eyeing Rosie’s legs, “you look like a ’56 DeSoto.”
    Father and son looked at each other, and a smile cracked Mr. Flowers’s poker face, and suddenly Rosie was laughing, guffawing, shouting with laughter, bent over with his hands on his knees. Brad chuckled more quietly. “This is a night Rosie is going to remember,” he said to Audrey.
    But she was not done with Colt. “I don’t understand what gets into you,” she scolded. “Maybe I ought to tell you to just forget about horseback riding until next summer.”
    â€œNo!” Rosie straightened suddenly, his face shocked and serious. “Audrey, I mean Mom, this was just something between me and Colt. He didn’t mean anything. Please.”
    Colt was so startled to find someone else doing his