In the Path of Falling Objects Read Free

laid down a rule and if I broke it, that would be like letting him beat me in a fight.
    The rain ended quietly before night came.
    I fell to sleep.
    Simon was already awake when I opened my eyes. It was late in the morning and the air in the trailer was becoming hot and thick whenI heard the soft rubbery thud of something dropping down from the ceiling and hitting the floor below the edge of the bed where we had slept. Then came the scraping-clicking of movement of legs along the linoleum.
    “There’s a big scorpion over there under that trash, Jonah.”
    It didn’t really register. I sat up, letting my feet down onto the floor, and then, realizing what Simon had said, lifted them back up onto the bed.
    “What did you say?”
    “I saw a scorpion crawl under that trash there.” Simon nodded his chin to show the direction, across the floor, the trash piled up on the other side of the doorway.
    “It’s really hot in here,” I said.
    “I think it’s late.”
    I looked down at the floor once more, then swallowed and put my feet down and stood. I felt surrounded by an empire of angry and poisonous bugs, all hiding, watching, waiting to attack. I opened my pack with two fingers, and peered inside to be sure there was nothing alive there. I saw the shine of the pistol’s barrel and the rest of our tangled clothes on the bottom, beneath the canteen. I shook out my shoes and slipped my bare feet into them, then cuffed my jeans and tiptoed to the door. When I tried to open it, the knob came right off in my hand and I nearly fell down, backwards, right on the spot where the scorpion was hiding.
    “I told you you wouldn’t be able to get that open,” Simon complained. “Now what are we going to do?”
    Sometimes, just the way he said things could make me so mad, and at that moment I wanted to throw that useless metal knob right at his head. But I knew I had to do everything I could to avoid fighting with Simon out on the road, even if he was always pushing at me. We didn’t make a rule about it, but I think we both knew we didn’t have to say it.
    So I took a slow breath and bent to line my eye up with the rotten cavity where the doorknob had been attached. I poked a finger into the grease and rust of the hole, pushing and twisting at what was there, but nothing moved, and the door remained wedged tight.
    Simon sat up, pulling straight the dingy tee shirt that had wound around him in his sleep. He was wearing my socks, and from the scattered and muddied papers on the floor he carefully picked his shoes, looking into them and shaking them out before slipping them loosely onto his feet.
    I kicked the bottom of the door as hard as I could, denting its tin paneling and causing the top to buckle just a crack. It hurt my foot. I was hot, and so frustrated I wanted to scream.
    “You’re stupid,” Simon said, goading.
    And the scorpion emerged, flattening its yellow-brown body beside my foot. I jumped and stamped my heel across its abdomen, sending a spray of thick white slime several inches out on the floor. The stinger twitched and curled like a beckoning finger. I kicked the door again and raised my hand to punch it, but stopped myself. I didn’t want to look at Simon. I know I would have hit him if he said anything to me; even—especially—if he said “nice job.”
    Sweating now, I pried at the top of the door, bending it slightly, but it began cutting into my fingers and would not move. I just stood there, sweat dripping from my neck, running down my chest. I stared at my feet, at the dead thing on the floor next to me, my hair, untied, hanging like blinders so I didn’t have to look at Simon.
    “We’ll have to bust the window,” I said.
    “Do you want me to do it?”
    He might as well have just called me
stupid
again.
    I sighed. “I will.”
    And it felt good to break something, to hear the sound, the release of the glass snapping and popping beneath my foot as I balancedmyself atop the splintered table,