The Complete Lockpick Pornography by Joey Comeau

Author:Joey Comeau
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2012-12-12T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

David is trying to tell me about lasers as we make our way through the woods. He says, “No, that’s not what I said. I said ‘coherent light.’ I have a book. It means that the light waves are in phase with each other.”

“They’re what?”

“They’re lined up!” he says.

It’s hard to hear him, because he’s walking a few feet ahead of me and he won’t turn around when he talks. My dress gets caught on a bramble again, and this time it tears. The trees block out the sky, but every once in a while I can catch a glimpse of the laser’s light through the branches. It looks like it’s getting closer. I can see the beam all the time now, not just when it’s touching a cloud. It looks like a strand of mint dental floss, pulled tight across the sky.

“You know an awful lot for an eight-year-old,” I say. “Are you some sort of scientist?”

“I’m going to be a physicist,” he says. He climbs up on a rock. “Like Richard Feynman. I’m going to learn how to do everything. I have books on mathematics and chemistry, and maybe if we make another atomic bomb I can work on that too. I’m going to learn to pick locks and pick up women like he talks about in his books.” He jumps down from the rock and turns to grin at me.

“I can teach you how to pick locks,” I say, and he laughs.

“Richard Feynman won the Nobel prize,” he says. “He was smart like Einstein, but he was funnier. You probably work at a hair salon, or with computers. You probably work at Kentucky Fried Chicken,” David says. “How would you know how to pick locks?”

“I taught myself,” I say. We come to the edge of the woods. “Picking locks is a way of making sense of the world on your own, without people explaining what things are for,” I say. “Picking locks is like wearing a dress if you’re a boy.”

This is someone’s backyard, and above their satellite dish and chimney the laser is brighter than ever. As a cloud drifts over it, a point of brilliant green appears, wavering up and down with the shape of the cloud.

“It looks closer now,” I say.

“What will we do when we get there?” David says.

“It’s probably up on someone’s roof. Maybe they’ll let us inside to see it.”

We walk in silence for a while, David running ahead, across people’s lawns, but never too far ahead. He must know by now that something weird is going on. I don’t think he understands that we’re kidnapping him. My anger has worn off. I’m not thinking about saving him, about opening his mind to the knowledge that it’s okay to be different, for boys to dress like girls. I’m not thinking about reversing the damage his father has done to him. All I’m thinking about is finding the laser. I don’t know what I’ll do afterward, but right now he and I are going to find that laser together.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.