Man Made Boy Read Free Page A

concentrate on anything in this environment. The blinking neon advertisements, gigantic flashing LCD screens, car horns, stereos, and thelow hum of hundreds—maybe even thousands—of human conversations converged on me like a sticky, electrified spiderweb.
    “Ah, here we are,” Ruthven said when we reached a plain storefront that said THRIFT in black letters on the window. He opened the door and gestured for me to go first.
    Once inside, I had to swallow my disappointment. The light was dim, the floor was a dirty tan linoleum, and the walls were white with weird streaks of yellow, like water damage. There were no neat clothing displays or pictures or mannequins, just row upon row of clothes hung on rolling frames. A few customers were scattered around the store, flipping unenthusiastically through hangers.
    “Well?” asked Ruthven.
    “Oh…” I said. “Um…”
    He patted my arm. “I fear this will be the first in a long line of disappointing revelations that humanity is not accurately depicted on television.” He scanned the aisles of clothing. “The young ladies’ apparel is over there, I believe.”
    “All of that?”
    “Do you want me to help you?”
    “No, I’ll figure it out.”
    I flipped through shirts, skirts, jackets, and jeans. I didn’t really know what size Liel was, so I held up some blouse thing, trying to gauge if it would fit. This could be harder than I thought.
    “What are you doing looking at girl’s clothes?”
    The voice was so sudden and unfamiliar that I nearly dropped the blouse. My pulse was hammering in my ears as I turned toward the source.
    It was a human girl around my age. She had bright red hair and freckles on her soft, round face. I still had my hood up, so she didn’t see what I looked like until I turned toward her. Whenshe saw me, her eyes went wide and her mouth tightened and I thought she was about to let out a scream. I braced myself, thinking maybe Ruthven was wrong. Maybe I couldn’t pass for human and I had just ruined it for the entire company.
    It hung there for a moment, then her face relaxed and she just said, “Well?”
    “Well what?” I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
    “What are you looking at girl clothes for?”
    “Oh! For a…uh, friend.”
    “A girlfriend?”
    “No. I mean…not really….”
    “I get it.” She gave me a smile. “You
want
her to be your girlfriend.”
    I laughed a little. “Yeah, kinda.”
    She scrutinized the blouse I still held in my hands. “You don’t want to get her something like that.”
    “No?”
    She shook her head. “It’s old-fashioned. And not very romantic.”
    “Well, I don’t want it to be
too
romantic. In case…”
    She gave me a knowing smirk. “You want something that
could
be just from a friend, if that’s the way she wants to take it.”
    “Yeah, totally.”
    “You want to get her something like…” Her eyes flickered across the isles of clothes. “What size is she?”
    “I was trying to figure that out….”
    “You don’t know?”
    “No.” It seemed like a failure of some kind.
    She sighed. “Typical boy.”
    “Yeah, I guess.” I couldn’t help smiling at that one.
    “Is she, like, my size?”
    “Taller,” I said. “And a little smaller in the…um…” I held out my hands in front of me, saw how huge and ugly they looked compared to hers, and quickly put them back in my hoodie pockets.
    “The boobs?”
    “Uh, yeah.”
    “Okay, we probably need to go one size down. Follow me.” She marched down one of the aisles. I walked behind, feeling like I had just lost all control of the situation. And yet, I had to admit, I was really enjoying it. The store may have been a disappointment, but the human was kind of cool.
    She held up a white, blousy shirt. The material looked thin, almost transparent, and there were little lacy frills around the wrists and neckline.
    “How about this?” she asked.
    “Uh, maybe something that isn’t