Freak City by Kathrin Schrocke

Author:Kathrin Schrocke [Schrocke, Kathrin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62324-008-0
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2014-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

When I pushed open the door to my room, I almost had a heart attack. Claudio lay sprawled across my bed. He had stacks of old issues of National Geographic all around him and was leafing through them. The magazines belonged to my father, and he almost never let me borrow them. Iris sat on the carpet combing her Barbie and listening to “Benjamin the Elephant Saves the Beaver” for the eight hundredth time. I knew Carla Columna’s part by heart.

“Get out!” I said to my sister. She looked up, hurt. “Get out!” I repeated. I went over to the stereo, took out Benjamin the Elephant, and roughly slapped the CD into her hand.

Claudio glanced up from his magazines, looking bored. He didn’t seem to find it strange to not only spend the afternoon with my dad, but to take over the rest of my life, too. He lay there on my bed as if it were his room. As if that were his little sister, and as if those magazines belonged to his dad.

“Claudio is much nicer than you!” Iris said as she made her way past me, sobbing.

“You’re right,” I muttered and slammed the door shut behind her.

“Why are you in such a shitty mood, man?” Claudio yawned. “I like Benjamin the Elephant. Besides, your family is nice. You don’t always have to be such a jerk. Your dad said you’ve really changed recently.”

“Must be the contaminated tap water,” I said. “Or maybe it’s because I’m fifteen and not six anymore. That’s always hard for parents to take!”

Claudio threw the magazine aside. “Let’s stop fighting,” he said in a conciliatory way. “I want to hear the facts. Sex and crime. Whatever, as far as I’m concerned you can leave out the crime.”

“What facts?” I sat down next to Claudio. With the remote, I turned the radio on.

Before I had gotten together with Sandra, we had done this all the time. Me and Claudio, next to each other on my bed. We had listened to music and talked for hours, sometimes about incredibly private things.

It was only the last few weeks we hadn’t seen each other so much. I had stopped letting him in on stuff. Maybe because he just couldn’t understand a lot of things anymore. Because I realized that our lives were going in different directions.

“Where were you? Other than me and Tobias, you don’t have any friends, so that’s out. That means you spent the afternoon with a girl. Who was it? Are you together with Sandra again? Or were you with the hot pool hall broad?”

I turned the radio up louder. “Video Killed the Radio Star!” I loved that song. It was the first song MTV ever played on the air. I was somehow sorry that Leah would never be able to hear it.

“I was at the pool with Leah,” I said as casually as possible. “Sandra still hasn’t made up her mind. She needs more time. But I think my chances aren’t too bad.

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