FaceSpace by Adrian Chamberlain

Author:Adrian Chamberlain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2013-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

On Saturday morning, I groan and open my right eye to look at the clock beside my bed. It’s 9:02 AM. That’s weird. I usually sleep until ten on the weekends.

What’s that splashy sound? I open both eyes. Someone is taking a great big whiz with the bathroom door wide open. Scott. That’s what woke me up. What a pig.

Scott walks out. He raises his hand to his head and then groans softly. He’s wearing a Super Troopers T-shirt and tighty whiteys. He scratches his butt. Ugh. What a sight.

“Hey, little bro,” he says, his voice all croaky. And he lights up a cigarette.

“That’s gonna kill you,” I say.

“What?”

“Cigarettes. Idiot.”

I grab my pillow and throw it at him. It turns out to be an amazingly good shot. The pillow neatly knocks Scott’s cigarette right out of his hand. It goes shooting across the room. Scott has to run over and grab the cigarette before it burns down the house or some crazy thing.

“Danny. Are you nuts?”

“No smoking. Mom says.”

“Yeah. And do you do everything Mom says?”

“No,” I say.

“Sure, you do. A good little Lego-making boy like you.”

Suddenly, Scott jumps onto my bed and gets me in a headlock. He’s laughing. And then he starts rubbing his other hand over my face and on my hair. I remember he just took a whiz and probably didn’t wash his hands. So I get mad and pound Scott really hard on his back with my fist.

This takes him by surprise, I guess. He lets go and sits on the side of the bed, gasping.

“Danny. Jesus. You knocked the air right out of me.”

“You asked for it. It’s all that smoking. Your lungs are probably fried.”

Scott starts telling me a long story about this stupid party he went to last night. The thing about my brother is, when he tells you a story, he has to tell you every detail. Like who said what to who, and what the other person said about that. It’s totally boring, although you’d never know it to look at Scott. He’s laughing at the funny parts and frowning at the dramatic parts.

He’s talking about some guy called Chubs who ate four cheeseburgers in a row. He is telling me about Chubs trying to decide whether to order another burger or maybe a chocolate milkshake when I decide that I want to talk to Scott about James and FaceSpace. This gives me a funny feeling, like I’m about to make a presentation in front of the class.

“Um, Scott.”

“Yeah?”

Scott looks up. I can’t believe I’m going to tell him my big secret.

But I go ahead. Scott listens to the whole story. For once, he doesn’t interrupt or make a dumb comment. Afterward, he asks to see James’s profile on FaceSpace. So I show him.

Scott scrolls through it for a while. He sits back in his chair. And he lets out a long, low whistle.

“Oh man,” he says. “Oh man, oh man.”

This doesn’t make me feel better.

“Danny. Danny McBride. Earth to Dan-o.

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