The Brink Read Free Page A

Sam, so solid and dense, like the black foam at the tip of a microphone. On the right pocket of her jacketis a button: the radioactive symbol and the Ghostbusters line through it.
    â€œMy dad’s really strong,” Sam says. “He loves to hunt.” Sam sits in the rocking chair, making it rock as much and as irritatingly as possible. His bangs curtain into his eyes, and his mouth is half-full of the chocolate bar she bribed him with.
    â€œDo you see him much?”
    â€œAll the time,” Sam says. “He comes here too sometimes, just to watch the house. See who is coming and going. My mom doesn’t know.”
    This time, Sam’s lie is bold, riskier. Latrice raises her eyebrows and turns toward the window. The blinds are up, the drapes wide, and the streetlights make the parked cars look only half-there. Latrice’s jeep is parked at the curb, the sticker for the Princeton Seminary in the back window. By her worry, Sam can feel a trajectory taking shape, the flickers of a future impact.
    â€œOh, and thanks for the candy,” Sam says. “My dad doesn’t let me eat sweets.”
    Latrice checks her watch.
    â€œCandy and smoking,” Sam says. “He really hates both of those things.”
    Latrice stubs out the cigarette. “Your dad sounds like a piece of work.”
    Mom descends the stairs in her feathery blue blouse except now it’s too tight because Sam put it in the dryer, trying to be helpful. She smiles weakly. “The babysitter’s still not here?”
    Sam shrugs. The babysitter is not coming. She called, but Sam took the message and forgot to tell.
    â€œI can make us something,” Mom says. “I have some leftover chicken.”
    Latrice exhales and her breath just keeps going. “I’m vegetarian, remember?”
    Sam sticks out his tongue with the plop of chocolate. Mom fingers a cigarette from Latrice’s pack. “Not what I need right now.”
    Every class, they war, and every class, the earth dies. Over two thousand nuclear warheads exist, the professor tells them. But only twenty detonations are necessary to erase all life, and they have a hundred matchsticks. The twins, playing Russia and Brazil, can’t keep from bullying the planet. Ethan, with his arsenal, makes a point to tick off Guam in every strike. Sam just waits for the nuclear winter to snow all civilization. Once, the class gangs up on the twins and rains its stockpiles onto Russia all at once. But even then, even with their entire population killed, Russian missiles retaliate automatically. “It’s called The Dead Hand,” explains the professor. “Even when they lose, they win.”
    Jerusha begins to cry. “I hate this game,” she says. “All it is is getting killed.”
    The professor taps his fingers together. “Very good, so what are we learning?”
    Jerusha’s sobs fill the quiet room. At least she believes in angels, Sam thinks. At least she has someone to get her when the time comes.
    â€œAnyone?” the professor asks.
    Ethan says, brightly, “New game.”
    His father’s voice booms from underneath the house-painting van. Only his boots stick out.
    â€œHow’s your mother?”
    Sam leans on the van’s bench seat, unbolted from the car and propped against the garage wall, listening to the radio. A newscaster says that a West German plane landed in Red Square, that this might be the beginning of something. Sam spins a gasket around his fingers. A gasket is the ring of metal that goes between other metal, his dad said, to make them join. These lessons usually bother Sam. He doesn’t want to learn what his father wants to teach. But now, here is this bright fact of gasket. Even words can grow up and make themselves useful.
    Sam stares at the hanging lamp over the car, puzzling an answer. His father doesn’t know about Latrice, who has been sleeping over and leaving paperbacks on the