Crystal Eaters

Read Crystal Eaters for Free Online Page B

Book: Read Crystal Eaters for Free Online
Authors: Shane Jones
kitchen window and everything from thewet cloth towels in the sink to the legs of the wooden chairs to the YCL in the bucket gets hotter.
    “I figured out his name,” says Remy.
    “Uh-huh,” says Mom. She smiles. She asks if Remy wants some apple. There’s honey near the breadbox. Again, she eyes the bacon.
    “Hundred.”
    “Come on now,” says Dad, still looking at Mom. He opens his mouth so Mom opens her mouth. It doesn’t work. Then his voice gets sharper: “Why’d you pick such a terrible name?”
    “It means he’s full. A living creature who will never lose his count. Like a person. Hundred.”
    Dad bites his bottom lip. “It means,” he says and then stops, composes himself. “It means,” he says, this time even softer, “that every time you look at him you will think about your count.”
    “But,” says Remy.
    “Change it.”
    “I think,” says Mom, “it’s a beautiful name.”
    Her voice is strong.
    “It’s death obsessed,” says Dad. “It’s not a name. It’s not a name a little girl gives her pet.”
    Mom stares at Dad and something shifts inside him because here is something Mom wants for her daughter, she doesn’t ask for much, and he knows it. Remy grabs the bacon.
    “You can name your dog whatever you want. Hundred is perfect. I love it,” Mom says. “Hundred! Hundred! Hundred! Is beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful! Hundred! Hundred! Hundred! Is beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful!”
    Remy starts singing along with Mom.
    Hundred comes running so fast into the kitchen that he sweeps the length of the floor with his body.

30
     
    S he called him Dog Man. She wore red shorts and dug in the dirt for crystals. When she threw dirt at Bobby T.’s face he crouched in the darkness and rocks clanged off truck metal.
    Arnold said, “Hurry up, Bobby T.,” so he did, he ran.
    In the distance a building burned. Z. said the girl was Remy. Her Brother was the founder of The Sky Father Gang. Remy acting like a dog was normal, that when she stands she looks like any teenager. Her family has hellish problems so it’s her way of getting things out of her, don’t call her a freak-o. Bobby T. made an Ahhhhhhh sound while nodding emphatically and said, “That makes sense,” though he wasn’t sure it did.
    Viewing the building illuminated with fire they applauded.
    Then they walked to their favorite spot to admire the prison. They kicked wind-blown garbage at the holes in the fence. The night sky was starless and smoky with a full moon. Everything felt crushable, even the trees. Z. had a feeling he couldn’t define that rattled him, made his heart hurt. He wanted to be more than a person. He wanted to live through people’s memories and through history, something his grandfather once told him, to pass along stories and myths (some of which he wrote), that’s how you live forever, become part of another’s reality after you’re gone. This talk has never left Z., the words coming justbefore his grandfather went to zero, his parents screaming to not watch, leave the room, stop standing in the corner like that. Z. has the idea of a colossal performance burning into the minds of thousands, his name inked in books and scatter-dropped into computers.
    The Brothers, about a dozen of them, ran until they leaned their chests into the fence and pressed their faces against the metal wire that left hexagons on their skin. Bobby T. played the song of the dirt and rocks clanging off the truck in his head and moved into a warm spot of good while the prison shimmered like a heaven.
    Z. fantasized about the jailbreak in reverse and tried to untie the knot of what it was. All the images were murky, people running in and out of the prison without reason. Bobby T. faced him, the prison now at his back. Mouth twisted, Z. was thinking it out, pacing like a starved cat, mind on overdrive, mouth mumbling at high speed. He said they had to do more than protests. He stopped and jumped forward, leering at Bobby T., and

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