Alan Cole Doesn't Dance by Eric Bell

Author:Eric Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

I’m silent when Mom picks me up half an hour later. The heat from the car blasts my face, and I close my eyes, pretending I’m hibernating deep in a cave, where nobody can find me.

“Is everything okay?” Mom asks when we stop at a light.

“Yeah.” My voice sounds like I haven’t used it in four hundred years. “Everything’s fine.”

Mom studies me. I give her a thumbs-up and go back to closing my eyes.

I wonder what Zack and Madison are doing right now. If Zack’s eating his “special popcorn.” If Madison’s off to the mall with his new friends. I wonder if they’re worried about me and Ron, if they’ve spared a thought for my safety and well-being.

I wonder if they’d take a punch to the gut for me anymore.

As the light changes, my phone chimes: a text. From Odin. All it says is:

Hello

I go to text back, but another comes in:

It’s Odin

Then three more:

Odin Thompson

From school

We have class together

By now I’m smiling. I thought I’d never smile again after being Ron’s pincushion, but there you have it. “Hey Mom,” I say, “can you drop me off at a friend’s house?”

When I ring the doorbell at a townhome, Odin answers the door. “Take your shoes off,” he says.

Odin’s home is smaller than mine—cozier, you might say—and there are unpacked moving boxes all over the living room. We walk past a glass desk. I stop to pick up the picture frame next to the computer monitor: it’s a younger Odin on the shoulders of a man who has his short, curly hair. Odin is smiling.

Wow.

I didn’t think Odin knew how to smile like that.

“Come on,” he says impatiently, and I set the picture down.

We walk upstairs to Odin’s room. It’s cozier than my room in every respect: smaller bed, smaller dresser, smaller closet. It’s not microscopic like Zack’s apartment room though. It’s also meticulously clean: no stray socks clog up the floor; the sheets and covers on his bed look like they belong in a catalog; even his stacks and stacks of books, encompassing what looks like every topic under the sun, are alphabetized by author.

“Let me see your sketchbook,” he says, snapping me out of observational mode.

I hesitate.

He rolls his eyes. “You’ve got two things in there, and I’ve seen them both already. Let me see it.”

I hand him my sketchbook. He’s gentle with his touch, taking great care to not crease the firm, thick, chalky pages. He stares at my cretpoj for a while, then at the outline of his own face. He flips back and forth between the pages a few times. I try to occupy myself with something else to take my mind off the lingering pain in my stomach and arms, and the flashes of Ron calling me garbage that sear like I’m on a skillet, so I say, “Can I see yours?”

He hands me a blue sketchbook without taking his eyes off mine.

I browse Odin’s art, expecting to see dragons, dragons, and more dragons. And

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