Full Tilt Read Online Free Page A

herhand. It was a diamond; and I had a feeling it was no cheap zircon, either, but the real thing. I clenched the arm of the misshapen bear tighter.
    “We’re engaged,” she said, and bounced up and down like a cheerleader. Her enthusiasm was met by our silence. “Well, aren’t you going to congratulate us?”
    Frankly I didn’t know what I felt: good, bad, or indifferent. The news hadn’t completely sunk in yet. But Quinn took it all in at once. First his ears went red, and the redness spread like a rash across his pinched face.
    “Well?” Mom prompted.
    “The last guy’s ring was bigger,” Quinn said, and tried to storm off into the house. Carl grabbed Quinn by the arm, and Quinn braced himself to be hit. It was a natural reflex after years of Mom’s boyfriends, who spoke in fists rather than in tongues. But Carl, to his credit, wasn’t like that. He only grabbed Quinn to get his attention, and he let go as soon as he had.
    “Hey,” he said, “I’ve got something for you, Quinn.” He held out a small jewelry box, flipping it open to reveal a tiny diamond ear stud. It was just like the one Carl himself wore.
    “I don’t want it.”
    “Take it, Quinn,” Mom said. It was an order.
    Carl cautiously took a step closer to Quinn. “Here, let me.” He removed the sputnik dangling from Quinn’s ear, replacing it with the diamond stud. “Sometimes one is enough, when it’s the right one.”
    Quinn grimaced like he was having a root canal.Finally Carl stepped back. The new stud was still one among three earrings in his ear, but it was definitely less in-your-face than the sputnik.
    “Can I go now?” Quinn didn’t wait for an answer. He bolted into the house, slamming the screen door behind him.
    Carl sighed. “Well, that could have been worse.” Then he looked at me. I was still feeling numb about the whole thing, but I knew what I had to say to get me out of this awkward situation.
    “I’m very happy for you both.” I turned to go in.
    “Carl has something for you, too,” Mom said.
    “It’s okay,” I told them. “I’m not Quinn. I don’t need a bribe.” The words slipped out before I could hold them back.
    “It’s not like that, Blake,” Carl said. “I know we’re going to be family. . . . But I want to be friends, too.”
    I cringed at the word family. For years our little family had been about as misshapen as the bear I was holding. It didn’t need more stuffing, it needed a complete makeover. The guys Mom dragged into the task never made it through the preliminaries. Was Carl so different? Did I want him to be?
    Carl reached into his sports jacket and produced an overstuffed envelope. He held it out to me, a gesture of friendship. “Just some things you might need at college,” he said, “and some phone numbers of friends I have in the city. New York can be rough without someone to help you out.”
    I took it, thanked him, and went inside, riding a waveof sudden nausea—a sort of seasickness from the many unexpected lurches of the evening. They say it’s not the sideways motion of a ship that makes you sick, but the pitch and yaw: the constant rising and falling of the bow, both predictable and yet different with every wave. On days like this, it felt like I’d never get used to it.
    Once in the house, I spared one more look at the ungainly little bear and his unpleasant yellow shirt. It was my trophy for a twisted evening that wasn’t getting any better. The corner of the invitation stuck out of the bear’s pocket, but I didn’t care about that anymore. I wasn’t going. Cassandra would probably be there, but who was I kidding? She was out of my league.
    On the way to my room I passed Quinn’s closed door. Angry music blared on the other side. I just didn’t feel like dealing with him, or his room. I mean, imagine the debris field of a tornado, and you’ll begin to understand what it looked like. There were dust bunnies that lurked in corners, evolving into higher