The Goats Read Free Page B

folded on the bed.
    He went back to the beach and made the girl stand up. She could walk if he helped her, but her knees didn’t seem to work properly. They kept locking with every step.
    When he got her through the window, he made her lie down on the bed and tried to cover them both with the blankets. It was hard to do. He had trouble getting the blankets unfolded, and they grated like Brillo against his bare legs. When he had done the best he could, he lay back. He didn’t feel any warmer. His hands hurt and his teeth were chattering. She began to curl up again, burrowing against him like an animal, thrusting her face into his neck and digging her fists into his ribs.
    â€œHey,” he said, “what’s the matter with you?” She didn’t hear him. He wondered if she was feeling warm inside. He knew that when you froze to death you were supposed to feel warm inside just before the end.
    He took off his glasses and folded them neatly, but there was no place to put them. He looked up at the ceiling. Someone had pinned a centerfold directly overhead. It was of a lady with her legs spread. She looked as if she were falling on him from an enormous distance. It was such a joke. It was such a joke he wanted to laugh.

    He woke up when she rolled away from him. He could see blue sky out of the window. His hands hurt, but he was warm. Deliciously warm.
    â€œAre you okay?” he asked.
    She squinted at him with bleary distaste, as if she had stepped in something disagreeable and wasn’t sure what it was. Her glasses were all cockeyed, but still on her nose.
    â€œWhere are we?” she said finally.
    â€œIn the house. The cottage. I broke in.”
    â€œYou broke in?” She stared at him. “You just broke in? They could put us in jail!”
    â€œNo, they couldn’t,” he said, but he wasn’t really sure. “You were passing out all over the place. I had to.”
    She grimaced and wiped her hands against her chest as if they had dirt on them.
    â€œI feel sick.” She craned her neck around. “Aren’t there any clothes or something?”
    â€œI don’t know. Shall I look around?” He waited until she turned away, and then he got out of bed slowly. It hurt to stand up. His legs and arms ached. He pulled out the drawers in a cupboard by the sink and found some towels, a pair of pants stiff with paint, a grubby sweat shirt, and a couple of T-shirts.
    He put on the pants. He couldn’t stand on one leg, so he had to sit down in a chair to do it. Then he put on one of the T-shirts. The clothes were too big. They were for an adult.
    â€œThis is all there is,” he said, taking the girl the sweat shirt.

    â€œThat’s okay. Give me that other undershirt, too.”
    She drew the sweat shirt up over her arms and lay back, looking at the ceiling where the centerfold was floating like some kind of angel gone bad. The boy went back to the sink and rummaged in the shelves overhead. There were cans of fruit cocktail and chicken noodle soup and an open box of saltines. In a rusty refrigerator he found a half-empty bottle of ginger ale. He carried the crackers and the ginger ale back to the bed.
    â€œEat some,” he said.
    The crackers were soft and stuck to the roof of his mouth. She couldn’t swallow the crackers, but she drank some of the ginger ale. It was warm and flat. Then she dozed off again.
    He lay down carefully beside her, propped up on one elbow so he could look at her face. Her hair was matted and her forehead puffy with mosquito blotches. Her ears were waxy and not very clean. They had been pierced, but she didn’t have earrings.
    He couldn’t remember now why she was supposed to be a real dog. He couldn’t even tell whether she was pretty or not. She had long eyelashes and her lips curled up at the corners. That seemed very remarkable to him.
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    When he woke up the second time, the girl was trying to crawl over