Read Resurrection Bay for Free Online

into a false sense of security before going in for the kill. It’s such an all-important conversation that Mom had to order a pizza rather than cook. She also had to order it online, since she was already on the phone.
    Mom doesn’t cook anymore. She does nothing much motherly or wifely anymore since Dad did some unmentionables during his midlife crisis. Brontë and I have become convinced that Mom, God rest her soul, kind of died inside and hasn’t come back from the dead yet. We keep waiting, but all we get is Domino’s.
    “I’m sixteen,” Brontë says. “I can spend time with whoever I want.”
    “As your older brother, it’s my sacred duty to save you from yourself.”
    She brings her fists down on the table, making all the dinnerplates jump. “The ONLY reason you’re fifteen minutes older than me is because you cut in front of the line, as usual!”
    I turn to our father, searching for an ally. “So Dad, is it legal for Brontë to date out of her species?”
    Dad looks up from his various layers of pepperoni and breadless cheese. “Date?” he says. Apparently the idea of Brontë dating is like an electromagnet sucking away all other words in the sentence, so that’s the only word he hears.
    “You’re not funny,” Brontë says to me.
    “No, I’m serious,” I tell her. “Isn’t he like . . . a Sasquatch or something?”
    “Date?” says Dad.
    “Just because he’s big,” Brontë points out, “that doesn’t mean he’s apelike; and anyway, you’re the lowest primate in our zip code, Tennyson.”
    “Admit it—this guy is just one more stray dog for you!”
    Brontë growls at me, like one of the near-rabid creatures she used to bring home on a regular basis. Our house used to be a revolving doggy door, until Mom and Dad put their feet down and we became fish people.
    “Is this a boy we know?” Dad asks.
    Brontë sighs and gnaws her cheeseless pizza in frustration.
    “His name is Brewster Rawlins, and he is nothing like what people say about him.”
    This is not the way to introduce your father to a prospective boyfriend, and I figure maybe Dad might be terrified enoughto forbid her to date him.
    “Exactly what do people say about him?” Dad asks. Dad always begins sentences with the word exactly when he suspects he doesn’t want to hear the answer. I snicker, knowing that Brontë is stuck; and she punches me on the shoulder.
    What do they say about the Bruiser? I think. What don’t they say? “Let’s see . . . in eighth grade he was voted Most Likely to Receive the Death Penalty.”
    “He’s quiet,” says Brontë. “He’s inscrutable , but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. You know what they say: Still waters run deep—”
    “—and are full of missing persons.”
    Brontë hits me on the shoulder again. “Next time,” she says, “I’ll use your lacrosse stick.”
    “Inscrutable . . . ,” Dad says, mulling over the word.
    “It means ‘hard to understand,’” shouts Mom from across the room as if he didn’t know. Mom never passes up a good opportunity to make Dad look stupid.
    “Your mother,” grumbles Dad, “knows full well that inscrutable was one of my words.”
    “Nope,” says Mom, “it was one of mine.”
    They’re referring to the vocabulary curse Brontë and I have been under since kindergarten. Mom and Dad alternate in force-feeding us one power word every day, which we are expected to swallow without vomiting. That’s what you get when both of your parents are professors of literature. That, andbeing named after dead writers. Very aberrant, if you ask me (Mom’s word). As teachers, however, they should have realized that Tennyson Sternberger would not fit on a Scantron.
    “The Bruiser comes from a screwed-up family,” I tell Dad. “They’re a bunch of nut jobs.”
    “Oh,” says Brontë, “and we’re not dysfunctional?”
    “Only your father,” says Mom. “But apparently he’s taken care of it.”
    Mom could have been a great