In the Path of Falling Objects Read Free Page A

bracing with both hands pressed up against the smoke-yellowed ceiling of the trailer. I looked up and saw I’d left two sweat-grimed handprints over my head.
    I thought maybe someday, someone would know I’d been here, even if they never knew who I was.
    We gathered up the wet clothes we had taken off during the storm, and I threw them from the window, far enough so they would not land in the shards of glass on the ground below us.
    Simon crawled out first, and I handed him the pack before following.
    I brushed myself off and looked up at the sky, squinting, and judged that it was already nearly noon.
    We walked out beyond the edge of the trailer’s shadow and began picking up our wet clothes.
    “We should just leave those here,” Simon said, “they’re too wet to put in the pack.”
    “I don’t have anything else to wear. Except for some underwear, it’s all your stuff in there now.”
    “Well, why’d you give me your socks then?”
    “ ’Cause I’m stupid.”
    I stepped through brush, gathering our scattered clothes, shaking them out, draping them across the fold of the pack. I felt like an idiot. I stopped and let the pack fall to the ground, turning back to face my brother standing there in the shade of the crooked trailer.
    “You left Matt’s letters in there, didn’t you?” Simon said.
    And I didn’t say anything. I just left the pack there in the dirt and walked back to the trailer, and boosted myself up on the naked wheel hub so I could squeeze my way back into the opening of the broken window. I felt the sting of a small cut on my belly when it raked across a tooth of glass. I climbed back into the hot trailer, watched as the blood slowly trickled, thick and dark, staining thetop of my jeans. I wiped it away with a rust-stained palm and pressed against the cut to stop the bleeding. It didn’t hurt too bad.
    I found Matthew’s letters stacked on the bed where I had slept, where I had left them. The cut stopped bleeding. Frustrated and sweating again, I picked up the letters and went to the window to hand them out to Simon and just then the door swung open behind me, spilling the brightness of the sun and a few dirt-stained drops of water into the trailer.
    Simon had gone around and, smiling, effortlessly, pushed the door open.
    Simon loved pushing buttons.
    And I felt so stupid and mad I just closed my eyes tight and said, “I swear to God I’m going to kill you today, Simon.”
    And Simon just stood there in the doorway, a crooked smile on his lips, watching me clutching those papers, sweating in the steaming heat of that crooked trailer, blood smeared like crusted paint across my tightening belly.
    “Are those mountains Arizona?”
    “No.”
    We had been walking on that dirt road away from the trailer for two hours. Shirtless in the heat, I tied my torn flannel around my head, draping the sleeves and tails over my burning shoulders. Our clothes, dry now, were stuffed into the pack again, and I stopped, looking back at Simon, who held a hand out like a baseball cap shading his eyes, dressed in jeans that were a good two inches too short and a graying tee shirt that was beginning to show small holes beneath the arms, dragging his feet in the dirt. I removed the canteen and took a mouthful of the summer-warm swill.
    “Here.”
    I held the canteen out.
    Simon tilted his head back and drank.
    “That’s the dirt track to Glenrio out there,” I said. “It goes just about all the way to Texas.”
    “How far is it?”
    “I don’t know. Do you want to sit down?”
    Simon corked the canteen and handed it back to me.
    I kicked my shoes off, pushing my feet around in the warm sandy dirt of the road. It felt good, dry. I sat, legs crossed in front of me, and opened the pack. As Simon lowered himself to the ground to sit in the small shade I cast, I took a pencil and my comp book from the pack and began making my marks, scrawling my words.
    “What’s that?” Simon asked.
    “I’m making a