The Goats Read Free Page A

anything—you know—harmful.”
    Margo shone her flashlight right in his face. “No? Well, what the hell did they mean? You tell me, Max. I really want to know. What the hell did they mean?”

The Cottage
    WHEN THEY were close enough to the shore to touch bottom, she couldn’t walk. She tried to, but she kept falling over. Finally he had to drag her out of the water, holding her by the armpits. He dragged her over a narrow muddy beach and up on some grass before his feet slipped out from under him and he sat down with a bump.
    He sat there panting while she lay between his legs, staring up at the sky through glasses pebbled with water. It was beginning to get light, with that pale dawn light that robs everything of color.
    He looked at her body. It was long and white. She had no breasts, just two shriveled nipples. At the bottom
of her belly was a little patch of hair, like a Hitler mustache. That meant that she was more mature than he was. He didn’t have any hair yet. The other boys called him Baldy. It was supposed to be funny, because he had thick curly hair on his head.
    We’re just little kids, he thought, and felt waves of self-pity sweep over him. He cried for a few minutes, and then stopped. She was shuddering and breathing funny, and her skin was cold, like damp rubber.
    â€œGet up,” he said.
    She didn’t say anything. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t say anything.
    The grass they were sitting on was short. His brain had to work on that fact for a moment before he realized that it had been cut. They were sitting on somebody’s lawn. He looked around and saw a dark house tilting over them.
    â€œGet up,” he said again. “There’s a house. We’ll get some help.”
    She rolled slowly off his legs and curled up in a ball on her side, sagging into the grass.
    He stared at her stupidly for a minute, and then got to his feet and climbed the lawn to the house. It was small and empty. A summer cottage. Large board shutters had been fastened over the windows. Behind it was a grove of dark trees. He could hear the drum of tires as someone drove by on a hidden highway. There was nothing else.
    She hadn’t moved when he got back to her.
    â€œNobody’s there,” he said. “It’s shut up. There’s a
road somewhere. Do you think you can walk? We’ve got to get some help.”
    â€œYou go,” she said quietly, into the grass. “You get someone.”
    He didn’t know if he could. He was shaking with cold, and he wondered if they were going to die. It seemed ridiculous, to die on the front lawn of someone’s summer cottage. There was a road not far away. At camp everyone would be snoring in their sleeping bags and soon they would be eating breakfast. It was summer. How could they be dying like this?
    â€œI’m going to try to break in,” he said.
    The door was locked and the shutters over the windows were fastened with big rusty wing nuts. When he tried to turn them, blood came out from under his fingernails. His skin was white and shriveled. He thought he would show the people who owned the house his fingers. Then maybe they would understand why it had been important that he break in. As he looked at his hands, he became angry at the people because they had locked up their house and because they weren’t there to help. He found a stone and smashed at the wing nuts on one of the window shutters until they broke off and the shutter fell onto the porch with an enormous crash. Shocked, he waited, afraid that someone might hear. It occurred to him that he wasn’t thinking very clearly.
    The window wasn’t locked. He lifted the sash and looked inside. The cottage was small, no more than a single room. There was a sink and some cupboards on
one side, a table in the center, and a bed. Light fell in pale bars through the cracks in the shutters. He could just make out some blankets and a tattered quilt