Colt Read Free Page A

not even in his mother, who was a lot of fun but kind of dense sometimes about what a guy was feeling.
    So who the heck was this Brad Flowers that he knew so much? Never having paid much attention to his mother’s boyfriends, who had been coming and going since he could remember, Colt had not yet noticed that Brad was different. But now he noticed: Brad had been around longer than any of the others. Six months at least.
    Mrs. Berry sailed up. “Ready to get down, Colt?”
    â€œNoooo,” he said sarcastically, to annoy her. As usual, it didn’t work. She was too busy bossing the two people it took to get him off Liverwurst and into his wheelchair again.
    His mother and Brad Flowers had an easier time of it getting him into the backseat of the car. They had more practice, and his mother, who had been lifting him since he was a baby, was big and strong—not chunky, just long limbed, athletic, and deft. Brad Flowers was a husky slow-moving man, raised on a farm before he went into the army. Colt noticed that he didn’t drive, the way most of the boyfriends did. Brad let Audrey drive, even though she drove like she talked: awfully fast, with lots of shortcuts.
    â€œWell?” she yelled back at Colt.
    â€œWell, what?”
    â€œYou riding again next week?”
    â€œI guess.” There was something special about being on top of Liverwurst. A lot better than being under his big rubbery slobbery nose.
    â€œSoon as we get home it’ll be time—”
    â€œ I know .”
    First thing when he got home Colt had to get to the bathroom and catheterize himself. That is, he had to empty his bladder with a small flexible plastic tube.
    Maybe the one thing Colt hated most about spina bifida was that the nerve damage left him without any control of his bodily functions. He always had to be on a schedule to take care of them. He always had to worry about springing a leak and embarrassing himself in public.
    Barreling through the living room in his wheelchair on his way to the bathroom, propelling himself over the low-pile carpeting with his hands, Colt nearly ran into a few things: a casserole containing dried-up bits of macaroni and cheese; Muffins, the Yorkie, eating at the casserole; a cut-glass vase being used as a holder for hammer and screwdrivers while its silk flowers lay dumped to one side; a giant box of Tide on its slow way to the basement; a water-color paint kit laid out to dry, then forgotten; his mother’s oxfords in the middle of the floor—she had left her thick white cotton socks draped over the unicorn picture on the wall. (Audrey Vittorio was a postal employee, and Colt often wondered how many pieces of mail she had messed up during any given day.) Also in the living room were Rosie and Lauri Flowers, Brad’s kids, looking as out of place as many of the other objects there.
    Surprised and a bit flustered to see the Flowers kids, Colt called hi but did not stop to talk. He got himself through the extra-wide bathroom door, found his catheter and sterilizing soap and cotton pads, positioned his wheelchair by the metal stall bars, lifted himself from the wheelchair to the toilet, worked his sweat pants down and took care of himself. Neely was older than he was, and Neely still had his mother or a school nurse do the job. Neely was a wimp. Colt had been catheterizing himself since he was six. It didn’t hurt.
    He struggled back into his pants, got back into the wheelchair, washed his hands and his catheter, and put everything away. The whole process took a little while, maybe fifteen minutes. Now he would be good for another four hours by the clock. Whoopee.
    No hurry. While he was in the bathroom, where he had some privacy, he did a few of his daily exercises, lifting himself up out of his wheelchair until his arms were straight, then setting himself down again. One, two … ten times. Later, once he had cleared a space on his bedroom floor, he would do his