Grendel's Guide to Love and War by A. E. Kaplan

Author:A. E. Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2017-04-17T16:00:00+00:00

Zip and I decided to hang around Chambliss until Ed was done with his shift, and by the time we got back, it was six o’clock. We pulled up in front of my house, and I looked over at Zip before she got out.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

She shrugged. “I have to give the boy a chance before I slay him. It wouldn’t be sporting otherwise.”

“So you’re really going to talk to him?”

“I am.”

“Am I coming with you?”

She thought about that for a minute. “Actually, I think you are. Thank you.”

“Sure.”

“And maybe Ed, too.”

“Um, are you sure about this? If you feel like you need double backup, maybe we should just skip it.”

“Thomas, I can handle this. Just hang out in the background. That’s all.”

“Okay.”

We grabbed Ed, who had come in his own car, and made for the Rothgars’ backyard, where Wolf was crouched over the speakers. He looked up as we came through the side gate, and stood up slowly, wiping imaginary dirt onto his pants.

“Well, well,” he said, eyeing Zip. “You heard I was here and couldn’t stay away, Zipora?”

She stopped on the other side of the table. Ed and I held back and tried not to look like idiots while we stared at the grass.

“No, Wolf. I didn’t know you were here until a few hours ago.”

He smirked. “Of course you didn’t.”

She made a face and took a step closer to him, one hand balled into a fist at her hip. In that pose, she looked like our mother. Without the eyeliner and the funky hair, they might have been sisters. I wondered if Zip saw it when she looked in the mirror. I wondered if maybe that was what all the eyeliner was for.

“Look, Wolf,” she said. “It’s about these outdoor speakers and these big parties—”

“Your baby brother needs you to be his mommy?”

Zip and I both flinched. “Listen, you bastard—” I said, but Zip waved me off. She laid a hand on Wolf’s arm, and for a split second I could see that there was something between them, something I really didn’t want to know about. He looked down at her hand and back at her face. It was almost tender, that look. Affectionate. But then it morphed into something ugly.

“Wolf,” she said. There was a rigidness to her posture that told me two things: she truly, deeply hated Wolf Gates, and she’d waited a very long time to do something about it. “Come on. You know my dad’s in the army, and he’s…he can’t handle all this.”

“Last time I checked, we had a volunteer army, Zipora.”

“Come on. Don’t do this.”

“Do what? Look, he got paid to be in the army. That was his job. Am I supposed to give him a cookie for doing his job?”

“You’re supposed to act like a human being!”

He laughed. “How am I not acting like a human being? What am I doing, Zipora? Throwing some parties? Look, your dad can take his taxpayer-sponsored VA benefits and get himself some nice, tasty therapy.

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