Brat by Gabriel Smith

Author:Gabriel Smith [Smith, Gabriel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

I rode in the back seat. The boy and the girl sat up front. I did finger guns at the deer field as we drove away from it. The rain on the soft top of the car was making a good sound. My wet clothes were making the tan leather seats dark.

We took the bridge over the estuary, past the strange birds and electricity pylons that lived there. The bad neighborhoods at the edge of the town. A roundabout with drive-through restaurants and a bowling alley. Then we drove through the forest, to the ocean. The infected hole in my leg hurt through my saturated jeans.

They stopped the car in a car park that faced the ocean. The boy leaned back and opened his hand at me. Inside his hand was a blue circular pill. I took it without saying anything. I crunched it up in my teeth.

I said, “Thanks, Felix.”

“That’s not my name,” he said, “that’s a cat name.”

“And I suppose yours isn’t Joanna,” I said, to the girl. She didn’t say anything. We sat listening to the rain for a moment.

“How’d you fuck your face up this time?” Felix said, through the rearview mirror.

“I got in a fight. With an estate agent.”

“You’re selling the house?” the girl said.

“You need to not do that,” Felix said.

“I don’t want to,” I said.

“I’m serious,” Felix said, “like really fucking serious.”

“You need to take better care of it,” the girl said. “It’s important.”

“Right,” I said.

Then I said, “Hey, Felix, did all your skin ever peel off?”

“All my skin?” he said.

“Yeah. Like a reptile.”

“Uh,” he said, “no.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe when you were a child? And you were too young to remember.”

“Maybe that happened to me.”

“You can’t remember now. Because you were a child.”

“Maybe,” he said.

The wind was picking up and making the rain come sideways. The blue-gray sea was so full of movement you couldn’t even see the rain land.

I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of it.

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