Table of Contents
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Chapter One: Pablo, When They’re Kissy
Chapter Two: The Swimming Ribbon
Chapter Five: Things I’ve Killed
Chapter Six: Jesus’s Secretary
Chapter Seven: Stealing Mommies
Chapter Eight: Pissing in Three Acts
Chapter Ten: If It Weren’t for Kevin
Chapter Eleven: Legless Cuckoos
Chapter Fourteen: Picasso’s Not Home
Chapter Sixteen: Sleeping in What Is Small
Chapter Seventeen: Poor Martin Hornbuckle
Chapter Eighteen: The Shark Curtain
Chapter Twenty-One: The Report Card
Chapter Twenty-Two: God Bless the Midway
Chapter Twenty-Three: Emptiness Pulls
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Red Strings
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Spider Eyes
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Hey Seuss
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To Ray, first, last, and always
Chapter 1
Pablo, When They’re Kissy
Lauren laughs and points at me. “Lily’s got fleas!”
I’m thirteen and I don’t have fleas but I have been scratching and my fingers freeze like dinosaur talons over my arm. When I hold them up and make a face like a hungry T-Rex, my younger sister says I’m “weird,” but she doesn’t know a T-Rex from a T-Bird, or that all birds are dinosaurs, or that Mom’s new car is a 1960 fire engine–red Thunderbird. The Thunderbird is a Mexican bird that went extinct before the dodo did.
“Dodo did.” That’s funny.
“Mom, Lily called me a dodo.”
Our beautiful mother rolls her eyes. She stands at the breadboard making banana-and–peanut butter sandwiches for tonight’s star party. “All right, Lima Bean. Thanks for the APB.” APB stands for All Points Bulletin. Mom smiles at me and asks, “Itchy?”
Yes.
No.
I shake my head and stick my hands in my pockets one, two, three times. I consider the word “itch.” It’s onomatopoeic, which means the word sounds like what it means. I love words: big, small, musical.
Mom says I’m the smartest teenager she’s ever met.
She wraps the last sandwich in wax paper and sticks it in the fridge. Second shelf, left side, piled one on top of the other, folded side down. I open the fridge and double-check that they didn’t shift
