Almost Home by Jessica Blank

Author:Jessica Blank
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction - Young Adult
Publisher: Disney Publishing Worldwide
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

critter

i fell in love with Tracy at the Santa Monica Pier. I can’t ever tell her that. I tried to once and she kicked my ass. Just looked at me through those slitty eyes of hers and said if I ever said that shit to her again she’d break her beer bottle on my face. I kept my mouth shut after that.

That one night was different though, I think because she didn’t really know me and when things happen with strangers it’s different than with people you know. Or people who know you, really, is what it is: Tracy thinks she can keep anyone from getting to know her, and she gets pretty pissed when you prove her wrong. But that first night I was just a kid she’d seen around on the sidewalks. I knew friends of her friends in that thing that happens on the street when all the little circles of people link up and make a chain, but no one I knew’d had sex with her and I didn’t know her name. We both hung out in Hollywood, so it was weird that we wound up out at the pier, weird enough that it made us actually smile when we saw each other, start to talk. I’d been sleeping just south of there in Venice for a week, since the rainstorm of Eeyore and Scabius: things got too crazy up on Sunset so I took off for the beach with its rainbow fuckin’ flowers and old dried-out hippies who lugged their shit around in guitar cases. Vacation. After a while I couldn’t deal with the drum circles, though, so I followed the bright lights north to the pier.

It’s at the arcade that we see each other. Some hyper kids are playing that old-school game where you have a bunch of plastic guys all attached to a rod and you have to slam them around so they kick the ball onto the other side. Dumb. For some reason the fact that they’re yelling and jumping and getting all worked up about this stupid ancient plastic-guy game is pissing me off and I’m watching them, trying to narrow down my eyes to points so they’ll turn around, be scared of me and scatter. I’m full-on focused on my goal when Tracy comes up next to me. She doesn’t say anything, but I know she must’ve been there for a minute, because when I finally feel someone standing there she’s already comfortable, leaning back on her heels with her arms crossed, copying my stance. It’s weird, the switch from the feeling of total one-pointed focus on smaller-than-me people who I could’ve made flinch, to looking down and realizing that the whole time she’s been watching me. My center of gravity is gone. I uncross my arms and she smirks. I don’t know what to do with my hands. I smile back.

“Having fun?” she asks. I right away realize what an asshole I look like, standing there staring at a

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