"Steven Gould - Jumper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

If I'd only been better as a kid. Maybe Mom wouldn't have gone, Dad wouldn't drink so
much....

"My apartment is just two doors down. I'll call nine-one-one." The woman didn't wait for a
response. I watched her hurry past, a container of Mace in her hand, connected to her key chain. As
she walked down the sidewalk, she stayed away from the buildings, checking the doorways as she
went by.

Smart. Much smarter than me.

911, That meant police. I'm a minor and a runaway. I have no ID and I don't want my
parents notified.

I thought about my hotel room, still three blocks away. I didn't even feel like standing, much less
walking three more blocks. I knew I'd feel safer there. I thought about my arrival there, of the steel
door with the good lock, of the torn wallpaper. It was even paid up for three more days.

I closed my eyes and jumped.

The hotel floor was warmer than the sidewalk and I felt much safer. I edged over to the bed and
pulled myself up, slowly and carefully.

I got blood on the pillow but I didn't care.
 Around midnight I went down to the bathroom, walking carefully, like my Dad after a night of
drinking. It was empty. I locked the door, then ran a bath while I peed.

In the mirror I looked like something out of a slasher movie. Blood had run across my hair from
the scalp wound, matting it and making the light brown stuff black and nasty. The upper left side of my
face had also lain in the blood where it pooled and it was patchy, flaking off and leaving the skin
underneath discolored. I shuddered.

If I'd felt well enough to walk back to the hotel, I doubt I would have made it without the police
being called every block.

I got into the tub, amazed that there was hot water. The last two days it had been tepid at best. I
eased onto my back and lowered the back of my head into the water. There was a slight stinging but
the heat felt good. I worked soap into the hair gently, and washed my face. When I sat up, the water
in the tub was brownish red. I rinsed the soap and residual blood out of my hair with the tub's faucet,
and was drying off when someone tried the door.

"I'm almost done," I said.

A voice from the other side of the door said loudly, "Well hurry it up, man. You got no right to
be hogging the toilet all night."

I scrubbed harder and decided to let the hair dry by itself.

There was a loud noise, like someone hit the door with the flat of their hand. "Come
ooooonnnnn. Open the fucking door!"