"Kit Reed - Family Bed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Kit)

Gameboy, children, and no TV, especially not now, and definitely no talking after the half hour officially
designated for sharing in which we each have to say something embarrassing to make it stop, and as for
cell calls or instant messaging, forget it. You get grounded, or worse.

—Mom, it's only nine p.m.!

—Finish your cocoa. It's nine o'clock, she says in Channel Five news tones. Grimly, she adds what I
know by heart. —and I know where my children are. Night-night, children. Kisses, everybody. Mmm,
now you. Mmmmm. And you. And you— is she counting? —Sleep tight.

Mother, I'm sixteen years old!

Nice, you think, but only because our mother has you brainwashed. We have the perfect mother.
Everybody says so on TV. We are a media phenom: magazines, supermarket rags. How perfect, you
think when she gets all gooshy about family stuff, which she does on every talk show between here and
East Wherever, I wish we were close like that. Snug as bunnies in the nest.

Do you hear yourselves?

—Family bonding, Mother says with that smug, perfect smile, while Daddy nods gravely into whichever
camera, yaaas, yaaas. —This is our private, special time.

Mom, everybody I care about is down at the mall!

But I am jabbed by knees and elbows and sandpaper heels on the special big bed Daddy built for us
when we outgrew the super King, six Dermotts locked down for the night. Together. Again. Well, all but
one, and this is what they are all ignoring, like: under cover of darkness, my one remaining big brother has
fled.

I still miss Darryl. I love Billy and I'm scared for him, well, a little bit. But I am also pissed. Why should
he have all the fun? He's malling with slutty Jacie Peterson, for all I know they are going to have sex, and
me? I love Tommy, why can't I … It's for his own good, I think, but I am lying to myself. —Mom.

—Shhhshh, Sarah, night-night.

—Mo-om!

She probably already knows. She'll blow it off just like everything else that doesn't fit her glowing picture,
like, pretend it isn't happening. When I grab her toe she says, —Howard …

Dad plants one foot on my shoulder. —Sarah, that's enough.

—But Dad! Bill is … God only knows what he's doing and it is killing me. —Mother, he's gone!

—Honey, he probably had to … Embarrassed pause. —You know.

—Pee? That's crap and you know it, he's …

—Language!