The Saints by Lex Thomas

Author:Lex Thomas
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781606843376
Publisher: EgmontUSA
Published: 2013-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

21

GATES SAT IN THE DARKENED BACK END OF the school bus. It was his room now. Orange extension cords snaked along the floor, which was littered with candy. He’d removed all the bench seats except for a few, which he’d left loose, like the two arranged end to end that he sat on now. They worked as both his couch and his bed. The four TVs he had arranged in front of him shined a modulating light on his face. Three were hooked up to separate DVD players, and one to a PlayStation. He was watching a porn, a supernatural soap opera, a movie about bicycle racers, and playing a firstperson shooter video game, all at once.

He was bored.

Getting the parents on the roof to bend to his will was supposed to make him feel better. When Will had told him the name of the motorcycle man’s kid, he’d known he had to do what he did right then. He’d figured it could ingratiate him to the rest of the population by punishing their ex-tyrant, while also turning the tables on the evil pricks that had them locked up. But more important than anything, he’d figured it would be really fun.

He’d been riding that high for a week. These kids must have thought he had five-hundred-pound balls after what he’d done on the quad. It more than made up for not being able to free everybody when they’d first shown up at McKinley. Every day since he’d kidnapped Sam, he’d anxiously anticipated the parents next move, loving the constant tension of not knowing. But when they caved, and they delivered everything he asked for, it just … kinda sucked the fun right out of it.

His eye stung. It felt like there was a grain of sand under the lid, but no matter how many times he splashed water in it, the feeling persisted. He opened an individually packaged Rice Krispies square, and tried to see how big a bite he could take. His bite was so big, it started to hurt his jaw to try and chew through it. The chewy muck didn’t taste that great. Like Styrofoam and a sweet version of glue. Glue wasn’t sweet at all, he’d tried it. He’d always thought wood glue would taste sweet, because the color of it looked dessertish, but it turned out to taste awful.

With a burst of machine-gun fire, he died in the video game. He hadn’t been paying attention. That had always been his problem in school. He couldn’t pay attention to what the teacher was saying to him, even when he was talking right in his face, it was just too boring. His mind would start wandering in the middle of the teacher’s sentence. He’d start thinking of how many dance club foam machines it would take to fill the whole school with bubbles. He’d fantasize about the girls he was chasing. He’d try to think of ways to embarrass the teachers. They all thought he was dumb anyway, just because he couldn’t bear to listen to their boring bullshit.

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