Emancipated Read Online Free

“Better leave by the back door,” his father had advised with a nasty cackle. “These days, anyone who sees your sorry ass on my porch is gonna get to wondering what the ungrateful little faggot is doing visiting his pa.”
    John-Michael felt a stab of pain at the memory of those words. Even now, it still hurt to hear his father call him names. He wanted to tell his dad he was sorry. But the truth was, he wasn’t. Not for any of it. He’d done his crying a long time ago. Most of it alone, on rainy nights, trying to find shelter in a phone booth, a doorway, anyplace where he might avoid waking up to feel greedy hands around his throat.
    He’d finally freed himself from the misery of Chuck Weller’s eternal bile and disappointment. Not tonight, but sometime in the last year. Tonight had merely been the outward expression of a sentiment he’d long ago internalized.
    Yet John-Michael’s hands still trembled slightly at the memory of his father’s words.
    You’re more like me than you know. Your mother could never have done anything like this .
    He placed a gloved hand on the handle of the back door. As instructed, he turned the key in its lock and then replaced it in the hanging basket of geraniums. He crossed the backyard, vaulted the wooden fence, and strolled across the brown field of undeveloped land at the back of his father’s house. He’d used exactly the same escape route a thousand times at least, ever since he was twelve.
    There was something cold and ominous in the idea that this time would be his very last.
    John-Michael turned to gaze one last time at his father’s house silhouetted in the neon streetlights from the front. The two-story building cast a long shadow, intensely black. For a moment that darkness seemed to stretch toward him. A little closer and it might swallow him up. He took a step backward. His heart was pounding, hammering so hard that it rattled the bones in his chest.
    â€œGood-bye, Dad,” he whispered.
    It was scary to be out in the city, alone, carrying several thousand dollars in cash. John-Michael wished he could just take his dad’s car right away. But his Dad’s instructions had been clear. Hold your horses. Be cool; wait it out .
    He’d be safe soon enough. The money would buy him a night in a comfortable bed and a big breakfast; the first time in weeks he’d manage to find that without having to get some guy off first. Not that he always minded—some of the guys who’d picked him up over the past year had been pretty hot. Some of them had wanted to see him again. But the idea of being anyone’s boy toy didn’t appeal to John-Michael. He wanted a guy his own age, someone who was still in high school. Maybe even someone a little younger. If he couldn’t have a relationship on equal footing, then he wanted to be the one with the upper hand.
    So far, life kept handing him the fuzzy end of the lollipop. Tonight had been John-Michael’s chance tochange that. His father’s exact words had been, “You’re a screwup, son. For once, I want to see something different. Prove to me that you inherited some balls.”
    Now John-Michael would finally have the opportunity, maybe even for the upper hand. Freedom had come at last. The price had been high.
    But then, wasn’t it always?

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
CANDACE
    CULVER STUDIOS, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5
    â€œDidn’t they say they wanted blondes?”
    Finally, the moment had arrived, the part of any casting call that Candace most dreaded: walking into the waiting area to be surrounded by a gaggle of identical girls. Same age, same slender bodies, same loose blond hair. Any idea of your own uniqueness went right out the window.
    To her surprise, this time was totally different. There were at least a dozen or so blondes,