Freaky Green Eyes Read Free

him. I escaped. I hadn’t had time even to be afraid. He was a bully and a coward and he’d be worried now, I bet, that I’d tell my parents what had happened, and he’d get into serious trouble.
    Well, I wouldn’t tell. It’s enough to have escaped.
    FREAKY GREEN EYES he’d called me.
    FREAKY GREEN EYES saved my life.

TWO
the celebration: april 18
    The good news was: Dad’s new contract with the network had come through.
    The less-than-good news was: Mom wasn’t here to celebrate with us, like other times.
    Dad was saying, “I’ve worked hard for this, and I think I deserve it. I’m just so grateful. I’ve been blessed. And you kids . . .” We loved Dad when he was like this, when he’d hug us so hard, our ribs practically cracked. “Well! What I’m trying to say is—the one thing that matters is family. A man’s family is his honor. It means far more to him than worldlyreputation. The way the world knows him. His dignity, his respect. We love one another, we Piersons, and we stick together, right? We’re a team .”
    Dad spoke in this warm, tremulous voice as he did on TV when an athlete or a team had done something spectacular. As a former football star, Reid Pierson identified with athletes the way most sportscasters never could. His boyish, battered good looks and one-hundred-watt smile had made him a favorite of TV sports fans, and when we saw him on TV, it was just so unbelievable, he was our dad .
    There was this fantastic tenth birthday of mine, when Dad was on TV covering a game in Florida for the network, and Mom had made a big bowl of hot buttered popcorn, and my big brother, Todd, and my little sister, Samantha, and I were sitting with her in the family room watching the program, and there was Reid Pierson looking so handsome and happy, and just before a station break, he winked at the camera and said, “Happy birthday, Franky!”—real quick, it went so fast probably nobody heard it except us. Happy birthday, Franky .
    Sure, I was proud. I’m only human. I’d have liked Dad to be home for my birthday but it was pretty decent compensation, that Reid Pierson was my father, and could wink at me via TV and wish me a happy birthday.
    Dad was one to celebrate things. What he called his Good News Bonanzas. Always there would be a Good News Celebration. A huge Chinese banquet, for instance. Dad loved getting on the phone and ordering enough food for a dozen people, and if Mom was in the room, she’d laugh (just a little anxiously, sometimes) and protest, “Oh, honey, who’s going to eat all that ?”
    Today, Mom wasn’t with us. I knew that Dad was pissed, I’d overheard them “discussing” the subject that morning. It must have been that Dad knew his good news was imminent, though he’d been secretive about telling us (for in the world of public relations and press releases you were bound to secrecy until certain facts were publicly acknowledged), so he didn’tlike it at all that Mom was going to an arts-and-crafts fair in Santa Barbara, California. Not just that Mom would be absent from our Good News Celebration, but Dad disapproved of his wife being involved with “artsy-craftsy” people he described as “menopausal females” and “gay boys”—categories of human beings to be scorned.
    I knew that Dad had put pressure on Mom to cancel her trip, like he’d pressured her into canceling a previous trip to Vancouver, B.C., back in January. That time, there hadn’t been any special Good News occasion, just that Dad wanted Mom home for the weekend. He traveled so much for his TV job, he said he depended on Mom being home when he was home. “Darling, it’s my job that finances our elegant lifestyle. And you enjoy our lifestyle, don’t you?”
    Mom had said quickly, “Reid, you know I do. Of course I—”
    â€œThe least I