Scam Read Free Page A

Cumberland Street and found the house—just a nondescript suburban house on a quiet dead-end street. I rang the doorbell, and a fat kid came to the door. “Who are you?” he asked.
    “Josh,” I said.
    “You selling something?”
    “No. I’m here to see Darren.”
    He rolled his eyes. “Oh shit,” he said and then yelled, “Darren, the new kid is here.”
    Darren bounded to the door with a big grin on his face. He shook my hand, and the fat kid wandered off inside. “That’s Kyle,” he said. “We’re working on his social skills. C’mon in.”
    The first thing that struck me about the house was that everything was completely ordinary. There was a living room with a tv, a kitchen and a few small bedrooms. “Don’t blame me for the home decorating,” Darren said. “It was like this when I got here. Do you think you can handle it?”
    “Handle what?”
    “Think you can live in a place like this?”
    I shrugged.
    “Josh,” Darren said, “you’ve had a big loss. If I was in your shoes, I’d be a mess. I never lost a parent. We just want to give you a place that is safe and give you a chance to recover. Aside from Kyle, you’ll have three other kids to share the house with. And me. I’m supposedly in charge.” He opened a door to one of the bedrooms. “You’ll bunk in here with Noah.”
    Noah was lying on one of the two beds in the room. He had dark hair, wore glasses and was reading a book. He looked up at me and nodded and said, “Like the guy with the ark. Only I don’t have any animals. We’re not allowed to have pets.”
    I nodded uncertainly.
    “Welcome aboard,” he said. “But I might as well tell you outright. I fart a lot, so you’ll have to get used to it.”
    “Thanks for the heads-up,” I said. I set my backpack down on the empty bed and let Darren lead me downstairs to what he called the family room.
    “Noah had the crap beat out of him by his father on a regular basis. It’s not the farts you need to worry about. He wakes up screaming sometimes. Think you’ll be all right with that?”
    “I dunno. I guess so. What should I do when that happens?”
    Darren smiled at me. “Do what you’d want someone else to do if you woke up screaming. You’ll figure it out.”
    There were two guys in the family room about my age. Darren nodded to them. “Connor and Brian, this is Josh.”
    Connor looked me over. I could tell he was one of those kids who liked to size a person up and stick a label on them. He held up his hand and said, “Welcome, loser number five,” as if he was a host on some game show. “Can we have a round of applause for Josh.” This didn’t seem funny to me at all. The other kid, Brian, didn’t say anything. He had some kind of handheld video game that he went on playing.
    Darren led me back into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Here’s the heart of this place. What’s here is yours as much as everyone else’s. We all gotta share, and I hope you’ll chip in with some chores. For now, that’s it. Make yourself at home. What would you like to do first?”
    What I wanted to do was get out of there and go back home, but I was playing it cool. “Okay if I just go for a walk?”
    “Absolutely. Dinner’s at five. Connor’s making macaroni with chunks of hot dogs cut up in it. It’s his specialty.”
    “I wouldn’t want to miss that,” I said.
    As I walked out of there, I felt a new wave of sadness sweep over me. The loss of my mom was still sinking in. We’d never been much of a family. But it was my life as I knew it. I loved her, and in her own way she loved me. I would never get that back. I’d never get her back. If I’d thought I could run, I would have. But I didn’t have any place to run to.

Chapter Six
    The girl. All I could think about was calling Lindsey.
    I found my way to a park and sat on a bench. Pigeons flew down and started marching around in front of me. I guess they thought I was going to feed them, but I had nothing. I took