Read When Dogs Cry for Free Online

ruffled hair and human legs and nice feet. I wondered what quirks of hers he’d have to talk about. Maybe she insisted on him touching her leg in a movie, or liked turning her fingers in his hand. I didn’t know.
    It was quick.
    I spoke.
    I asked.
    â€˜Rube?’
    â€˜What?’
    He stopped digging and looked at me.
    â€˜How much longer for you and Octavia?’
    â€˜A week. Maybe two.’
    There was nothing for me to do but continue digging then, and the day wandered past.
    At lunch, the fish was greasy and great.
    The chips were sprayed with salt and drenched in vinegar.
    When we ate, Dad looked at the paper, Rube took the TV guide and I started writing more words in my head. No more cards today.
    That night, Mrs Wolfe asked me how everything was going at school, and I returned to my earlier thoughts that week of whether or not she’d had cause lately to be disappointed in me. I told her everything was all right. For a moment, I debated whether I should tell someone about the words I’d started writing down, but I couldn’t. In a way, I felt ashamed, even though my writing was the one thing that whispered okayness in my ear. I didn’t speak it, to anyone.
    We cleaned up together, before dinner’s leftovers had a chance to get stagnant, and she told me about the book she was reading called
My Brother Jack.
She said it was about two brothers and how one of them rose up but still regretted the way he lived and the way he was.
    â€˜You’ll rise up one day,’ were her second-last words. ‘But don’t be too hard on yourself,’ were her last.
    When she left and I was standing alone in the kitchen,I saw that Mrs Wolfe was brilliant. Not smart-brilliant, or any particular kind of brilliant. Just brilliant, because she was herself and even the wrinkles around her ageing eyes were the shaded colour of kindness. That was what made her brilliant.
    â€˜Hey Cameron.’ My sister Sarah came to me later on. ‘You feel like goin’ out to Steve’s game tomorrow?’
    â€˜Okay,’ I replied. I had nothing better to do.
    â€˜Good.’
    On Sunday, Steve would be playing his usual game of football, but at a different ground to the local, out more Maroubra way. It was only Sarah and me who went to watch. We went up to his apartment and he drove us out there.
    Something big happened at that game.

    Â 
    the colour of kindness
    We arrive back in the city from the graveyard, and the night is still beginning.
    As we stagger forward, I think about the colour of kindness, realising that its colours and shades are not painted onto a person. They’re worn in.
    The dog glances at me.
    He knows my thoughts.
    Soon he stops again, and we’re standing in front of a building that spires to the sky.
    It has glass doors, like dark mirrors, and we stand.
    The dog barks.
    A defiant, deep bark, making me stare at my reflection. I have to.
    I look straight into me and see the colour of awkwardness and uncertainty and longing.
    And for the first time ever, I don’t shrug myself away from that. I get inside it, to feel the force of it.
    I get ready.
    To climb through it.

5
    O N THE WAY UP TO S TEVE’S , I WONDERED WHAT THE HELL my sister Sarah was going to do with her life. She walked next to me, and most men who walked past us watched her. Many of them turned around once they’d gone past and took a second look at her body. It seemed that to them, that’s all she was. The thought of it made me a little sick (not that I can talk), and I hoped she would never end up actually being that life.
    â€˜Friggin’ perverts,’ she said.
    Which gave me hope.
    The thing is, I think we’re all perverts. All men. All women. All disgruntled little bastards like me. It’s funny to think of my father as a pervert, or my mother. But somewhere, in the crevices of their souls, I’m sure they’ve slipped sometimes, or even dived in. As for me, I feel