Becky's Kiss Read Free

trees, definitely.
    Becky made her way to the utility room and put in the wash, careful in her mind to pronounce it “waaash,” like they did around here instead of “wersh,” even though it sounded horribly incomplete and snobby. She even set her cell timer and put the load in the dryer forty five minutes later, thinking herself ultimately responsible. It wasn’t until the clothes had about ten minutes left that she smelled something burning…gasoline, pungent and slick.
    She came up out of the synopsis she had downloaded about Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, as Mr. Marcus had said that, by the end of the semester, everyone had to read a modern American classic off this sheet and find “three symbolic threads.” Eight page minimum!
    She liked to get ahead on the first day of school, so she had scoured the titles, looking for something, anything for girls, and come up with boring Hemingway, confusing Ellison, awful Fitzgerald—that one on The Great Gatsby had posted the first introductory pages that no one in their right mind could possibly understand—and Cather, she who made Becky think of dust, creaky floorboards, and old ladies with their noses in the air, talking about sewing. And here, the Sister Carrie page wasn’t a synopsis, but rather some professor talking about the story in terms of “dichotomous merging of modernistic exploration and Victorian expectation,” and Becky Michigan had never felt so confused in her entire life.
    Then the burning smell, thick with smoke and gas.
    Becky jumped up, banging her knees on the bottom of her reading desk—only three blunders today, not bad, not bad—and ran to the hall. They had one of those ‘Rancher’ houses, all on one floor, no basement or attic, and Becky made the span of the place in about two and a half seconds, flying past the living room, through the kitchen, and out to the back porch, where the wall facing the back yard was a set of sliding glass windows.
    She stopped.
    It was Dad, standing with his back to her on the concrete pad in front of the tool shed at the rear edge of the property where the tall evergreen bushes made a slow spreading curve, separating their yard from the McKenzie’s. Brett Michigan was a big man, six-foot-seven, half Cherokee and half Dutch, giving him a Buffalo nickel pow-wow face and square head that had earned him the nickname ‘Flintstone’ so far back Becky didn’t even recall who had said it first. For some reason, he’d always kept his hair to match the cartoon classic, shaved up the back and close on the sides, with that little German flip in the back. Now it was up like a farm-hand’s cowlick, like he’d been running his fingers over the top of his head in reaction to some kind of desperate emotion, and there were flames in front of him on the concrete.
    Under one arm, he had a bag of sand, ready to throw on the blaze, and that was a good thing, but in his other hand was the bottle of Old Grand Dad booze that he’d sworn he kept around only for guests. He raised it to his lips and took a drink out of it like it was filled with Gator Aid.
    Becky ran to the porch door, also glass, and fiddled with the lock she wasn’t quite used to. Dad had stopped drinking last week—for the millionth time—and he’d promised he’d never go back, also for the million- millionth time. Outside, it smelled of the blaze, and Becky held her nose as she made her way over.
    Dad turned slowly, the reflections of the flames dancing in and out of the contours of his face, strobe-lighting the Florida-shaped birthmark under his left jaw. He looked down at her with red eyes, shocked and glazed.
    “Maggots,” he said. “It was crawling with maggots.”
    Becky looked at the burning pile and saw a fleck of yellow material curling, twisting, and turning black. It was the boy’s tournament shirt, and she put both hands up to her mouth.
    Brett Michigan brought the bottle to his.
     

 
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
    Becky slid the