My Name Is Not Easy Edwardson, Dahl (ebook reader web TXT) 📖

with his dad gone.

If Amiq left now, he wouldn’t even survive. Luke wasn’t sure how he knew this, but suddenly he knew it as sure as he knew anything. He thought about Amiq’s old man and Amiq’s vodka and all the drunks on Two Street like the one they found passed out behind a bar one time, frozen solid.

If Amiq leaves here right now, that’s exactly what’s gonna happen to him. If Amiq leaves alone, it would be like sending him off to disappear—or die.

Maybe Sonny was right. Maybe Amiq needed somebody

to beat some sense into him once and for all.

But when he looked from Amiq to Sonny, all he saw was a hard black web of anger, binding them both together in a stranglehold.

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It made him think of Bunna, watching out the window of Sacred Heat’s beat-up old bus that time. How mad he’d felt, watching Bunna roll away, his fi sts balled up against his side.

Mad and helpless.

“Only dogs get mad,” he muttered. He hadn’t meant to say it, hadn’t even thought it; it just came out. It’s what his aaka used to say.

Th

en he thought of his little brother Isaac, riding off into the dark of another night, his nose pressed up against the window of a car. How scared he’d been, that time, standing there in the dark, watching. Scared and helpless. Knowing it would be forever. Just like with Bunna.

What good did it do to know things if nobody listened?

What good did it do to know things when you weren’t even sure what it was you knew or what to do about it?

Th

at hard spot in his gut tightened. He imagined it like a lump of helpless fear and anger, frozen solid. Frostbite.

I’m the one who tests the weather, Luke thought suddenly.

Th

ey have to listen.

He looked right at Amiq as hard as he could look. Without any anger, without any fear. Just knowing what he knew.

But Amiq wouldn’t look at him.

“You don’t have to do it,” Luke said. “Not by yourself.

Th

at’s how people die—going out alone.” He thought of Amiq’s dad.

“I know,” Amiq said quietly.

“If you go out there now, all alone, it’ll kill you.”

Amiq looked up, fi nally. His face grew pale and helpless 219

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for just a second. Th

en with a fl ick of anger, he threw his

duffl

e over his shoulder and stalked out of the room. His whole body said it: who cares?

Luke thought of the ice age and how they’d survived it.

He imagined a white circle of frostbite on his own wrist, like a warning sign or a badge. Something you could wave in someone’s face: See? Not safe. I’m the law.

But when he looked at his wrist, he saw nothing.

It was late when Father Flanagan stuck his head into the room to tell them lights out. Later than usual. Nobody said a thing about the fact that Amiq wasn’t there. Th

ey didn’t have to.

Father looked right at Amiq’s empty bed and nodded.

“Go to sleep,” Father said quietly. “Th

e Lord will take care

of him.”

Father sounded so certain, it was hard not to believe him.

But we’re supposed to take care of him, Luke thought. Amiq is family.

Th

e thought was so loud, it startled him. He looked right at Sonny, and Sonny looked right back like maybe he’d heard the thought, too.

Father closed the door softly, and Luke leaned toward Sonny’s bed. “Hey, man, he’s our brother.”

Sonny didn’t answer, but he didn’t go to sleep, either. Th e

two of them just lay there, in the dark of night, watching shadows move while the others drifted off to sleep.

At last, Sonny sat up in the dark and spat out two words:

“Aw, hell.”

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Luke could hear Sonny fumbling around in the dark for his shoes, muttering, “Stupid Eskimo. Stupid doggone Eskimo.”

But there wasn’t any anger in his voice. Not a drop.

And Luke didn’t feel helpless anymore, either.

“What time is it?” Junior murmured.

“It’s the right time,” Luke said, smiling to himself.

And Junior smiled, too, half awake and half asleep, squinting owlishly into the dark. “It is, isn’t it?” he said.

Th

e woods were dark, all right, but Sonny knew the way. Amiq, in fact, had been the one to show it to him. Th

is thought made

Sonny smile into the darkness. Made him laugh, almost. Th at

crazy Eskimo and his Eskimo hideout. Hiding out from the Indians.

Well, not this Indian. Not this time.

He walked through the woods without a sound—not one single twig cracking, not one stone rolling.

Amiq was right where he knew he’d be, too. He hadn’t even heard Sonny coming. Even now, he had no idea that Sonny was standing right behind him. He just sat there in his darkened hideout, staring morosely at the ground. Sonny leaned forward. Amiq wasn’t just staring at the ground. He was holding something, something small that dangled from a slender chain and twinkled in the moonlight, and he was staring at an empty vodka bottle that lay on the ground by his feet. Looking at it hard, like he expected it to say something.

Th

at bottle had been there longer than Amiq had been staring at it, you could tell. Something