Cobwebs Read Free

the crabby Asian one. The other girl, the one with the hair and the eyes and the thin legs in Doc Martens with painted-on polka dots, nutty shoes that his little sister, Mina, would like.
    Dion whipped off his Mets cap and wiped the palm of his hand across his bald head. A hollow feeling grew in the pit of his stomach, a feeling of being scared, not hungry. His palms turned sticky and sweaty. He wondered if this was an anxiety attack, something he’d heard of from his mother. His mother … Was he going to be like this from now on, because of what hisfather had caught his mother doing? Anyone who would jump off a roof, on purpose to fall…How could he go home and have dinner with such a person? Or with the person who would let her get into such a risky position?
    “Stop chasing that Angel of Brooklyn,” his mother, Rose, had said. “Leave well enough alone.” She thought Dad was selling out, and selling the Angel out, and maybe selling the city out in the bargain. Dad said she was a bleeding heart, so worried about desperate people’s problems that she didn’t worry enough about her own family.
    Rose had gotten angry enough with Niko that she threatened to hurt herself, then tried to. Did she think by hurting herself she’d hurt him?
    Dion made himself think about the girl on the Promenade instead. Maybe he’d find her in that neighborhood or somewhere close by, if he hung around a lot. He pulled himself into a more comfortable position on the railing and suddenly felt a whoosh of nausea that came out of nowhere. He slammed his feet down onto the walkway and leaned there, gripping the rail, steadying himself.

    There was nothing under Nancy. The fire escape ended a story above the street. Nothing but strips of rusty fire escape held her up. “Crawl over the edge,” Ned advised. “Hang on by your fingertips.”
    With her hands above her head, she was six and a half feet high. (Ned had measured, so that she’d know.) It wasn’t so far to the ground. Far enough, though. Her knees crackled when she landed. Relief for Nancy.
    Down came Ned.
    “Chicken,” she said. Because there was no crackle landing for him. He landed softly on those slick cowboy boots that clacked when he touched the pavement. A strand of soft gray silk slowed his fall, glimmering just enough to be visible.
    “Hey,” he said, as they set off for the grocery store. “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
    “
I
did,” said Nancy. He let her get away with it, because, while she was still sweating, he was perfectly cool.

4
    N ed was a son of Anansi. His mother Aso’s side of the family were the African-Jamaican magical tricksters, able to leap and fall and disappear into shadows. Rachel’s were the Scottish orb weavers (Granny’s forebears, descendants of the unstoppable spider that had inspired Robert the Bruce) that hid among the thistles and the heather. Then there was Grandpa Joke’s side—just plain old Italians. Nancy had her father’s black hair—only a little softer, more Italian. She had her father’s brown skin—only a little lighter. Her mother was pale white. Nancy’s eyes were all Rachel, though. And inside?
    “Anything new?” Mama Rachel and Granny Tina had been asking Nancy too often lately (for the last three years or so). Rachel said she had begun to become what she was at around thirteen. Ned began a little later, as boys do. Nancy was older than both.
    “Same old beautiful me,” she told them, though it made a sharp hurt inside her to say it.
    Her mother and grandmother turned away to hide their faces. It was Grandpa Joke who stroked the hair back from her forehead and said, “That’s fine.” But lately she thought he was the one who looked most worried of them all. There was no special spiderness coming from anywhere inside her, no matter how hard Nancy listened for it, watched for it, waited for it. It seemed that so far Rachel and Ned’s genes had canceled each other out in Nancy.
    Canceled out