Adam Read Free

up.
    â€œâ€”by trying to shave before you need to, you’re giving yourself acne that could result in scarring, right, Richard?”
    â€œLeigh . . .”
    Adam stood up and started walking away from the table.
    â€œOf course whenever I mention calling Aunt Susan about her dermatologist, you just—”
    Adam plugged his ears with his fingers and turned down the hall.
    His mom stood up, shouting after him. “If you would stay put for five seconds, I could tell you how Daddy and I have been planning a special trip for you this summer to visit your sister in New York! But you probably don’t want that either, so I guess we should just forget the whole thing—”
    â€œYes! Forget it!” shouted Adam, stomping up the stairs to his room. “I’m going to Lake Tahoe with Brad and Colin anyway!”
    Adam slammed the door to his room. His most satisfying action of the day. He looked at his government book on his desk. A bald eagle frowning at an American flag. He did have a test tomorrow. That part wasn’t a lie. He sat down at his desk, stared at the unopened book, and casually pushed it off the desk onto the floor with a thud. He turned on his laptop, and a barrage of Internet porn ads attacked the screen. There was really no way to avoid them. Once you looked at one porn site, it caused some freaking worm or virus in your computer that notified all porn sites in existence, and then they showed up every time you opened a browser. It didn’t matter, really, since that was what he generally wanted to use the computer for anyway.
    Adam scanned the selections of “real teen girls” and “barely legals.” Sometimes it made him nervous, since he knew people got arrested for looking at child porn online, but
he
was only seventeen! He shouldn’t get in trouble for looking at girls his own age. Adam found an appealing ad with a blond girl rubbing a lollipop in between her legs. He clicked on the “free trial” link to watch the five-second promo. That was what he usually did, watched the promo over and over again until he was done. Credit cards were too risky. Not that he had one anyway. The blond girl stuck the lollipop inside her vagina. Then another teenage girl, this one with brown hair, appeared on the screen, took the lollipop out of the girl’s vagina, and put it in her mouth. The girls giggled and the screen froze. Adam wrinkled his nose. This was not the sort of video he liked. He didn’t know if this meant he was secretly gay or something, but he just really preferred if there was a dick involved. He didn’t want to see the guy’s face or body or anything nasty like that, just his dick. Preferably being sucked on or plunged into some girl’s hole. Adam scanned more ads. The lesbian thing was just really boring to him, especially since it was so obviously fake. He should know—his sister was a lesbian. And, yes, he’d seen her have sex.
    It hadn’t been his idea. It was Brad’s, of course. Brad was obsessed with Casey—all guys were—and was always bugging him, “When are you gonna let me watch your hot sister fuck another girl?” as if Adam were the bouncer to his sister’s bedroom door. “What’s her girlfriend look like? She hot too?”
    Adam had really liked his sister’s (now ex-)girlfriend. Her name was Sam, short for Samantha, and she basically looked like a boy. She always wore baggy jeans and a baseball cap and was super-polite to his parents, even though his mom referred to her as “Casey’s confused friend” behind her back. Their parents didn’t know Casey and Sam were girlfriends, and Adam had been sworn to secrecy. “It’s just easier this way,” Casey would say. “The last thing I wanna do is answer a bunch of freaked-out Mom questions about lesbianism.” Adam knew it was more than that. Casey didn’t want their mom to